Mighty temblor!

Evon Wainscott's morning started with a "pair of booms" that tilted the homemade crafts on her walls and left up to 100 cracks in her snow-covered yard.

The 61-year-old woman lives east of Kokomo -- a few miles from the epicenter of a 3.8 magnitude earthquake that lasted only a few seconds Thursday morning but was strong enough to be felt in six states. Here was the IndyStar story.

We told the story early on by use of Twitter. Here's one: #IndianaQuake 4.2 earthquake, Indiana. Dec 30 7:55am EST (13m ago, 9km SE of Greentown, depth 4.9km) see it yourself-> http://bit.ly/ftVPK3

A social (media) setting

A journalist has to be grounded in tradition but willing to step up at storytime. In this case, being platform-nimble. Journalism can be practiced within the tactile grip of a newspaper, the boundless vehicle that is the web and the short blurb of 140 characters. That's where this post comes in. I was honored to join WTHR (Channel 13) meteorologist Nicole Misencik on state at the studios of WFYI in Indianapolis to deliver a talk about Twitter for the Indy Social Media Breakfast. It was a real treat to talk about tweets. Here is the video replay of the chat on UStream.

Getting the jump

Drama began unfolding about 3:25 p.m. in Indianapolis when shots echoed around Downtown buildings. A man standing on the top floor of the eight-story Denison Parking Garage, just north of Maryland Street on Meridian Street, fired two shots into the air followed by one into his head.

Almost immediately, eyewitnesses began to tweet. And refer us to other tweets. Here's my thread.

@indystar #indyshots Here is what we know so far about the Downtown shooting on Meridian and Washington: http://tinyurl.com/2dgccvg 2:47 PM
@tigergixxer: Just saw a guy across from 30 S Meridian commit suicide & fall off parking garage. Was shooting guns in the air prior to that 2:50 PM
@BillRuthhart At the scene of an apparent shooting Downtown. Paramedics just picked a body off the sidewalk just south of Washington and Meridian streets 2:58 PM
@spaldobusiness http://bit.ly/988dUq --> Latest on #Indy shooting. @amybartner @billruthhart @kristoferkarol @kingdaviddogs + tweeps big help in reporting 3:32 PM
@BillRuthhart Suicide shooter fell from top of 8-story parking garage, nearly missing man walking below on sidewalk, wearing headphones. #Indy
@spaldobusiness Working with @indystar photogs Sam Riche and Matt Kryger, they are working up amazing pics from the scene of #indy shooting. On web soon. 3:47 PM
@MegFlyn This article shows power of twitter for receiving news: http://bit.ly/cmTdEG cc: @SpaldoBusiness @kristoferkarol #indy -- such sad news 3:48 PM
@spaldobusiness More on #Indy suicide; just talked with a witness, a CapGrille server who eyed the shooter as he pulled the trigger-> http://bit.ly/aUXIBe 5:43 PM

Witness: Tony Salamone (right), 39, a server at The Capitol Grill, says he saw the gunman in the last moments of his life. Salamone was interviewed this afternoon near the suicide scene by Jeremy Brilliant of WTHR (Channel 13), The Star's news-gathering partner. Photo by Tom Spalding.

Here is a screenshot of a first-person eyewitness account that I got later in the the day.

Twittering & Gen Con

On Aug. 4-6 some 28,000 people descended onto Indianapolis for the annual Gen Con convention. I was assigned to write up lite profiles of the gamer event. Factoring the hip, tech-savvy crowd was probably using social-media network Twitter to communicate, I tapped into that thread.

A pic I took of #gencon foam-pool noodle battle garnered over 200 clicks to Twit-pic.

Gen Con provided the first of jolt of the day not inside the Indiana Convention Center, but at a coffeehouse on Monument Circle. Au Bon Pain actually ran out of coffee early this morning, and gamers also formed long lines at nearby Dunkin' Donuts and at the java station inside Borders in Downtown. Guests and exhibitors are using the keyword #GenCon as a unified way to communicate via the social media website.

Gold-digging in Indiana

With gold prices peaking this summer at more than $1,200 an ounce, some people are seeking their fortunes in Indiana's streams. They're panning for gold. Hoosier gold.

I wrote a full feature in the Indianapolis Star, entitled Hoosiers Go Looking For Gold, a surprise hit!

Here was a slide show of the photos of gold prospectors.

The Associated Press picked up the story, as did The Kentucky "Courier-Journal", The Greencastle "Banner Graphic" and "Daily World", "Jconline" from Lafayette, "The mining Industry Today", USA Today, WIBC radio 93.1, "Indiatimes", "UPI", Topix, and RoadRunner. It was also on the Fox-59 news web site, WNDU-16 website, and The Mining Industry today.

In January 2010, I was asked by the Public Relations Society of America, Hoosier chapter, to pen a guest column for their February newsletter.

This was a fun assignment.

Here's what I wrote:

Do-It-Yourself News By: Tom Spalding

On Jan. 12, at Kilroy's bar in Downtown Indianapolis, a jubilant bunch of sports enthusiasts gathered for a 3 p.m. announcement about the Circle City's chances of landing a World Cup, soccer's most prestigious event. It was a big deal for Indy not Super Bowl 2012 big - but a breaking news story worth pursuing certainly.

The Star had a reporter at Kilroy's to cover the event, but as a 21st-century version of the disc jockey -- grab news and spin it into a story for our Web site, IndyStar.com -- my job was to watch for a simultaneous e-mail about the announcement. When it was learned that Indy was picked in the final 18 out of 27, I immediately went to Twitter.

I was third to make the announcement.

No other media beat me to it. It was a bunch of fellow Twitterers from that emerging social media service. Worse, it wasn't another scoop-minded reporter, but the media relations coordinator from Conrad Hotel Indianapolis (good job, Morgan Greenlee) and a couple of others. When I saw THEIR posts, my first reaction was, "Hey, that's my job." You know, the old school way -- source-to-reporter-to-audience. You tell me and then I spring into action, taking 20 years of journalism experienced learned in J-School at the University of Kentucky and crafted at newspapers in Sarasota, Fla., Indianapolis and a few other stops.

Not so. Scoop is a term that used to be limited to just the broadcast and print media, and a twinge of angst is felt every time the IBJ or another competitor gets a heads-up on an event we don't have.

But now the masses are on equal footing. Part of the blame lies on us. We taught folks they could do it themselves by having them using a service on our Web site that has been in place at the Star long before Twitter emerged. With shrunken staffs unable to respond to every request for news coverage, we turned to a kind of Matador approach.

If you get the facts right and names spelled correctly and it doesn't come off completely ad like, it's all yours to "post" on our site. No it's not the same as having your client land on A1 or one of our news section covers. But I hope that it's going to be easy to adapt to, because that's the future.

Here's the web version of the newsletter with my article in it.

Earthquake in Haiti

My short on Indiana Task Force 1 was included in USA Today's online presentation. Here is the link to the story.

In Indiana: Indy rescue unit prepares to help

Indiana Task Force One -- a search and rescue team of firefighters, medics, doctors and others -- is on standby today in case the group's building-search skills are called upon in Haiti.

The team's coordinator, Indianapolis Fire Department Battalion Chief William Brown, said by phone today from New Mexico that he's reached out to key planners on the Indiana team to make sure their passports are up to date and discuss other logistics that would be involved with an international rescue effort.

Task Force One, based at Indianapolis International Airport, is one of 28 teams linked to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Its 70-member team is filled with experts from local fire departments who can locate and extract people who are trapped within a collapsed structure caused by a natural disaster or act of terrorism. The team also has 12 search dogs.



Brown said a team in Virginia and one in California may be deployed to Haiti because of specific training it has in international response efforts. But others could be called in.

"We're paying attention. We're staying fluid," Brown said.

The Indiana Task Force, which was created about 20 years ago, last deployed in summer 2008 to the Gulf Coast and eastern Texas, where they spent three weeks assisting victims in the aftermath of hurricanes Gustav and Ike. The team also looked for victims in the flooded-out neighborhoods of Biloxi, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and was one of the first teams to be activated after the World Trade Center terrorist attacks in 2001.

-- By Tom Spalding, IndyStar.com