Breaking News Exercise: "THE VAULT IS MALFUNCTIONING"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE —

Several people were locked in a vault during an unsuccessful robbery at the First Community Bank this afternoon. The vault is now malfunctioning, possibly as a result of the computerized control panel being damaged during a firefight between the robbers and police officers.

The manufacturer of the vault, Star Security Systems, has dispatched a team of technicians to fix the vault, but it is anticipated that the team will not arrive until 6 p.m. In the meantime, the Community Police Department is seeking any locksmiths or other citizens who believe they may be able to help disable the vault's computerized locking mechanism.

The Community Police Department will not be making any other comment about the circumstances of the robbery or the firefight at this time.

ABOUT THE EXERCISE

The Breaking News Exercise was designed to provide a realistic and interactive journalism learning experience to its participants. The eight-hour exercise is designed to be a capstone educational experience, to be undertaken only after students have completed significant study in the basics of journalistic reporting, including ethics, narrative techniques, deadline reporting and news decision making. The exercise can be completed by one player or several players working together to make decisions about news coverage.

All that is needed to take part in the exercise is a personal blog, on which participants will publish breaking news updates throughout the experience. (You can watch a tutorial about starting a simple blog here.)

For the purposes of review, all events are currently displayed on this Website in chronological order. During an actual exercise, however, the events and updates will be programmed to appear at specifically designated times throughout the exercise — mirroring the conditions of a breaking news event in which information unfolds, piece by piece, over the course of many hours.

While the exercise can be completed without any human facilitator, instructors are encouraged to "enter the game" by taking on the role of one or more "shadow players" who can interact on a personal basis with participants — taking phone calls, exchanging e-mails and chatting via text or video to provide an even more dynamic learning experience. These roles are only limited by the instructor's imagination, but might include a victim's family member, a police spokesperson, or a confidential informant.

The characters and events depicted in this exercise are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

Special thanks to:
• Amos Guiora, whose annual counter-terrorism experiential learning activity at the University of Utah inspired the creation of this exercise.
• Bill Hopkinson, whose mandate to produce "a piece of extraordinary interactivity" resulted in this project.

Breaking News Exercise

INSTRUCTIONS

"THE VAULT IS MALFUNCTIONING"

ABOUT THE EXERCISE