Recap of My Recent Experience With TV and Print Media

Last week I was on a NYC subway train that ran over a man. The man fell into the tracks after passing out and was able to get into the space between the tracks so the train just ran over him. He is going to be ok and that is a miracle.

I was in the first car of the train and was able to capture some of the events on video and in photos. I posted a recap of the events along with the media on our sister site InsideTransit. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the events surrounding my blog post and the media.

Within a couple of hours of posting, I was contacted by AMNY (newspaper), the NY Post, Fox and CBS. AMNY and the NY Post asked if they could use my photos and I said ok as long as they credited me and InsideTransit. AMNY conducted an interview on the phone as well. Fox and CBS came to my home and both recorded interviews. Fox sent out Linda Schmidt and CBS sent out Lou Young. I have watched both of them for years but I'd give the nod to Schmidt on the interview questioning.

Fox played the interview during their 10pm newscast and I was credited properly. I saw a bit of a traffic boost from the interview. Fox used my live interview with Schmidt plus the video footage I shot at the scene. CBS came at 11pm and I saw another boost in incoming visitors from the interview. The CBS interview also credited me as I requested.

The next morning Fox and CBS replayed my interview with their morning reporters. Fox got it perfect, CBS not so much. CBS spelled my name incorrectly (Alan and Allan) and left out the site credit. I attempted to email reporter Jay Dow but couldn't find an email. I emailed their news desk and also never received a reply.

Later in the day I received a call from Monica Morales from NBC who asked if she could use my footage in her piece on the evening news. I said fine if you credit me. She said ok and also said that she'd love to get an exclusive next time and that I should call her first. I chuckled and thought of some tech blogs who require exclusives to be listed.

NBC played the interview and honestly this was the best one. At the end Sue Simmons says, "if you'd like to watch the entire video shot at the scene by Allen Stern of InsideTransit go to..." - this brought the most traffic of any of the media. I've embedded the NBC interview below.

The NY Post later that evening called and asked if they could buy 10 seconds of my footage for $50. I said ok and am currently trying to locate the family as I'd like to give them the money. They didn't credit me but I was told if they pay they don't credit.

My interview apparently ran on television and radio across the country including Chicago, Washington and Charlotte. You can find all of the interviews here.

At the end of the day, I found the news Web sites very difficult to navigate. I wanted to submit my media to the NY Times and after 10 minutes of searching, couldn't find any way to contact their news desk. The other NYC news outlets have contact forms but were either difficult to locate or didn't work as expected. In this world of user-generated media, you'd think the news outlets would want to make it as easy as possible to get information to them.  It's clear that old media isn't just ready to welcome new media yet.

From an analytics perspective, the users who came from the media outlets visited a variety of pages (average was 4 pages per visitor) and a few saved the site or grabbed the RSS feed. InsideTransit isn't a tech site so I wouldn't expect many to take the RSS feed. I have noticed a small percentage of repeat visitors that initally came from the NBC piece.

At the end of the day I saw a good traffic boost and overall was treated very well. But most of all, the man is going to be ok. I certainly hope the next time I get a media boost it comes from a positive story!