Locked in another spot news story under my belt

Luckily, nothing happened. The two spot news stories I have been sent to had not happy, but not bad endings. There were no casualties at the house fire, and there was not confirmed hostage situation at this one. I tried to get better at live tweeting. It's just really hard to try and get the news and get it out there so quickly. I'm scared that I'll say someone that's wrong or untrue and just mess up my entire Twitter reputation. That last thing I want to be called is Fake News .

Although no hostages were found (article linked), it was still kind of interesting because I didn't really know there was a law that made it illegal to make false police reports. In Missouri, it's up to 6 months in prison and/or $1000 fine, which is like, a lot. There had to have been more than 15 police cars present and a bunch of SWAT. That sucks that they had to waste their time coming out here. The PIO said that many of them were called in from home. Yikes.

I did try an tweet a lot. There really wasn't that much to tweet about though. I think that I was the only reporter that really talked to someone else other than the PIO. Although it was an active situation that ended with nothing, it was still cool to have that experience of just listening in on what people are saying and kind of just ask them about it. A lot of them are really nice and are willing to talk to you, but sometimes they just don't feel like talking. Sometimes I just want to ask them why, but it's not worth it sometimes. 

I think covering spot news is actually a lot easier than I thought. I could have just been over thinking it, or it is actually really hard I've just been put in really easy situations. The PIO basically finds you, which is nice, and he or she just does a general briefing of that situation to all news outlets. It makes it easier to know that you're in the right place too. Tracking down witnesses is really easy too because all of them are standing outside either in front of their homes or in an area where you know they're not just hanging out there for no reason. If one says no, you just move on to another witness. That easy really. But I could be wrong. I've never been in a very critical or bad situation before, so maybe it's a different environment that I have been exposed to.