'East Coast Rapist' Revealed: Covering breaking news with elbow grease, teamwork and digital tools

 I can't say enough about my city editor, colleagues and the corporate team that gave us tools to hit the pavement on this story in ways we could not have done only a year ago.

Let's go back to Monday, Feb. 28. That's when the FBI and local law enforcement officials launched billboard campaigns to draw out tips throughout the footprint of Aaron Thomas, 39, the so-called 'East Coast Rapist.' He has been linked by DNA to 17 rapes in Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island and the New Haven Register's anchor city, New Haven, Conn.

I covered a press conference announcing the campaign and my colleague Chris March and I built this map to give the public a visual representation of the trail of devastation left across four states by Thomas, an unemployed trucker.


View 'East Coast Rapist' Attack Area in a larger map

Four days later, our ace police reporter William Kaempffer and our standout city editor Helen Bennett Harvey got word that a suspect had been arrested. In a mix of the old and new when it comes to reporting, all three of us hit the phones calling sources and we jumped on that superhighway of digital information - the Internet.

Bill is trusted by his sources and has a solid reputation for honoring the journalism industry's standards on fairness. He scored the suspect's name, Helen used public records online to confirm a tip that Thomas had a court appearance the day before his arrest and our very bright, well-known court reporter/columnist Randall Beach scrambled over to the courthouse and found Thomas' address of record. But there were two, so I looked up real estate assessment records online using the HP Mini netbook that our parent company, the Journal Register Co., provided to those of us participating in the ideaLab project, supervised by Jonathan Cooper, vice president of content.

Chris and I are part of this year-long experiment to discover ways of improving our performance as journalists and to better engage the communities we serve; as well as identify tools, in both hardware and digital form, that can advance our Digital First approach to delivering news accurately as it unfolds.

Our CEO John Paton (@jxpaton) gave all reporters in the company Flip video recorders and those in the ideaLab also have netbooks, iPhones or Droids and iPads. Additionally, Verizon Wireless is allowing me to test the Samsung Galaxy Tablet alongside its Apple counterpart.

Getting back to last Friday, I grabbed my tablets and used the map programs to get me to the houses we had to visit in order to nail down where Thomas actually had been living. I knocked on doors in the neighborhood and Bill used an online directory to call people who had publicly listed telephone numbers.

Helen kept updating the story at http://www.nhregister.com/ as Bill, Randy and I came up with new information and we made sure to have fresh content for the paper the next morning. She is masterful in the use of social media and uses Twitter and Facebook to alert followers, friends and readers about up-to-the-minute developments. Follow Helen's posts @newsgirlct or @nhregister. You can also see an example here of how she uses Scribd to upload documents to enhance our story packages.

Our stellar photographers are using cameras, video cameras and MacBook Pros out in the field and getting pictures and video clips online so fast, Melanie Stengel and Peter Hvizdak had the only available photographs and video of Thomas arriving in court for a brief arraignment on March 7. Other news organizations made the appropriate arrangements to use them as well.

I sent out Tweets from court using our account for live coverage set up by Helen @nhrlive. As this case moves through the court system you can follow our updates using the Twitter hashtag #eastcoastrapist.

Chris, Helen, Managing Editor Mark Brackenbury, online producer Shawn Rychling, Valley Bureau Chief Michelle Tuccitto Sullo and several photoraphers have all tracked down records and information or kept our Web site rich with multi-media elements on this story.

I must give a shout-out to Andria Carter and Joe Kulkin at our sister paper, The Trentonian, for their support and sharing resources in coverage of both the 2010 Census and the East Coast Rapist case.
Well, I must sign off for now. I'm headed back out into the field for a community angle on this story. Stay tuned...