Busy morning

We have been extremely busy this morning with strong stories in all three of our news regions. The tragedy of the parents drowning in Portugal while trying to save their children was a strain on our resources as we didn't have any footage available for most of the morning.

I took the decision to splash the headline without a link early on this morning as it was clearly a lead story for the Thames Valley region with or without pictures. By 11.15am we were able to link to the report on the morning Thames Valley bulletin and then by 12.45pm to reporter Christopher Peacock in Wooten Bassett, where the victims lived.

Breaking news in a video-based service like ITV Local is never an easy task, as we are at the mercy of the cameras out in the field. Sometimes we can be creative with our links though, as in the green cities story (see blog below this one). We used a text link in the absence of any reporter packages - watch out for an update from our reporter Tom Savvides this evening on Meridian Tonight and Thames Valley Tonight at 6pm (online from 6.30pm).