It’s shocking that we still have to bring up how the ability to handle breaking news is critical for a newspaper transitioning to a 21st century news model.

And news organizations need to be able to deliver news on a continuous cycle, not in big chunks once or twice a day. But here we are again:

The Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald embarrassed itself and the journalism world with its lackluster coverage of the mall shootings that killed eight people on Dec. 5. The World-Herald apparently thought this was 1987, not 2007, because they were unable to cover a story properly that they should have owned.

Instead the World-Herald got owned. Alan Mutter recounts the embarrassing details:

Less than half an hour after gunfire broke out at the Westroads Mall shortly before 2 p.m. today, local television and radio coverage was well under way, according to a detailed account at Omaha City Watch, a blog written by Jim Minge and Sean Weide. The television coverage included all the trimmings: live shots, interviews with survivors, details about the assailant who evidently killed himself and pictures taken by eyewitnesses at the scene.

As for the Omaha World-Herald, its Omaha.Com website crashed within minutes of the event and was not revived for nearly three hours, according to City Watch. At this writing, more than nine hours after the event, the creaking site still is unable to reliably load a page. (UPDATE 12.6.07: Twenty-four hours after the shooting, the site is not responding at all.)

After the paper got its site back up, it had one story and some comments from local politicians. No video, no audio, no photo galleries, no multimedia and the paper didn’t already have a way for readers to send in accounts, photos and other information. In other words, the World-Herald blew it because of a fundamental lack of preparedness.

It allowed a lot of other news organizations to own the story, despite it taking place in the World-Herald’s back yard. Newspapers that have coverage like that deserve to die, because they are not serving their readers. A newspaper that isn’t serving its readers serves no real purpose.

And I’m sure many people in Nebraska are wondering what purpose the World-Herald serves. The World-Herald failed because it had no plan in place for how to cover a disaster (and it appears any real breaking news). The paper simply doesn’t have leaders that get what it means to be a newspaper in the 21st century — it has very little to do with the paper and everything to do with the news.

Trust me, having good breaking news coverage on your Web site can help sell newspapers. Being crushed by CNN, FOX and even bloggers will not help your paper do better. Mutter understands the strategic importance of the Web (the most used format by people to get news):

While the print product remains the primary business at newspaper companies, their websites are strategically important not only for their long-term revenue potential but also because of their immediate power to engage readers and, most importantly, non-readers.

Every newspaper needs to be able to handle breaking news as it happens and be able to own stories that occur in their own backyards. Heck, when I was editor in chief of my college’s newspapers, we owned a breaking news story of when the sophomore class president robbed a bank. That was in 2005, and it was after the semester was over during finals.

The easiest way to cover breaking news is to be on a continuous news cycle. Readers come to Web sites multiple times a day and expect fresh content each time. We need to give readers content all day long, and if a paper is on a continuous news cycle, instead of a once-a-day print cycle, breaking news will be easy to cover.

On a related note, Mindy McAdams says breaking news should be routine.

And if it isn’t at your paper, why not?