It should have been around 3AM when I had to change a diaper and calm the baby that I saw the first news of the earthquake that shook China: a 7.6 quake, which official authorities reported to have caused only 5 deaths! Either the affected region was admirably built and prepared to withstand that impact and the official media was informing with outstanding alacrity and accuracy or we were unfortunately and quite possible looking at quite a serious event that could in parallel lessen the media presence of the impact of the Cyclone in Myanmar, where most media attention was centered. Unfortunately, it seemed to be a perfect opportunity to start utilizing my time to push the Beta testing of Managing News.

Managing News is a very hefty and comprehensive media aggregator, tailored to track news, social networks, offers sophisticated customization, and helps to analyze how news emerge, what types of issues are taking relevance, and in what manner these news evolve. As part of my test run I decided to create two quick custom groups to chase the quake, one in English, and another one trying to track sources in Spanish.

When I changed another diaper by 7AM the system had not tracked much yet and the news of 5 deaths were nowhere to be found in mainstream media. The front page of the newspapers now talked of the enormous impact of a disaster with at least 3,000 deaths. It would not be until my next check up at 12PM that the earthquake would be picked up very prominently by the Managing News dashboard. The delay in aggregating the news, while still impressive, was shortly fixed and improved, making the aggregation happen rapidly once terms are entered. Interestingly the Spanish group had a third of the news sources, and was still picking up quite a few English sources. When compared to the strong tracking group in English, different terms were being highlighted in each group offering quite a complex multi-layered narrative of the developing news.

I will try to share some of the insights offered by Managing News in the following days, and in what ways it can be used to enable complex media analysis around emerging disasters. On a first impression, and given the range of current news sources, it seems critical to have the ability to use procedures to first capture as much of the noise, of the news, as possible, and then filter it out according to critical approaches. Managing News seems to be one the tools positioned to do just that.