OU Student Newscast Goes To Wall-To-Wall To Cover Norman Tornado

For the first time ever, the student-run newscast at OU did wall-to-wall coverage for hours during the storms Sunday night.

The students tracked the tornado, gave warnings, and covered the damage of the tornado that hit Norman. Journalism and Meteorology students put on a special edition of “OU Nightly” during the storms because a storm was headed straight for Norman.

"You wanted to be accurate,” said Catherine Liberta, one of the Meteorologists. “You wanted to make sure you were giving out the right information to people."

Students were in the studio, out in the field, and in the control room, putting the news on the air. They say they learned a lot about how to best handle so much fast-changing information.

"Learning while still experiencing and just kind of taking it in and doing it with my best friends is really great," said Sydney Wallace, who produced the continuous coverage.

Students say one of the best parts of the newscast was they were able to tell their peers about what was happening on their campus.

"Seeing how much everyone else really appreciated what we were doing,” said Emily Land, the Director of the newscast. “I even had my friends sending me photos of them watching the stream."

Barbara Merckx, the OU Nightly News Director, says normally, tornado season kicks off when students are out of school, so this was a unique chance to teach the students how to do severe weather coverage.

"We know you can have tornadoes any time of year in Oklahoma, but to have one in February and for them to have been able to plan this out, it's really good," said Merckx.

The students learned how to cover storms, but they hope the people watching, learned the importance of being safe- especially when they could be in danger.

"If we impacted one viewer it was worth it. I don't know how many people were watching, I doubt we had thousands of people watching like the Oklahoma City stations, but if one viewer took action because of the coverage we provided then it was a success," said Taylor.

Merckx and the students say they plan to do continuous coverage again, if they're in school, for future storms in Norman.