Yesterday, the entire northeast got walloped by a winter storm that resulting in hundreds of local closings.

It was a day to sit back and cozy up on a snowy Valentine’s day to watch reporters on your local news station make fools of themselves. There was the report from the manager at highway department, audio chat with the state police to check in on accidents, interviews with motorists brave enough to venture out to the gas station, the live spot from the snow bank, and full team coverage analyzing the molecular structure of each and every snowflake to make its way to the ground. Overly predicable and reason enough to want to perform a lobotomy on yourself.

In all this, however, there was a moment of realization that times have changed and some communications have improved. We used to wake up at 6 in the morning to dial-in to the a.m. radio listening intently to the roll-call that turns a day of misery into a day of joy for school kids. After the radio, we turned to the TV where stations started to publish closings on lower thirds. Then they started doing them three-a-time, speeding up the transition rate as more and more piled-on. Now, we head straight to the Internet to get the information we need instantaneously. Click on the big red link for school closings and delays, click on the first letter of your school, and voila!

What’s next? We’ll place our bets on text messaging notifications arriving into students’ cell phones so that they know immediately when a closing/late opening decision has been made.

Oops! Too late.

Then maybe it’s a video podcast from the superintendent. Whatever it is, it’s still the same message delivered in a different, better way.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 9:57 am and is filed under Interactive, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.