Laura Rutledge details chaotic Sugar Bowl coverage on New Year’s Day

Perhaps no reporter covering the New Year’s terror attack in New Orleans had to wear quite as many hats as ESPN’s Laura Rutledge.

In an interview with Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, Rutledge detailed the chaos of that day and having to serve different information to different audiences as news broke surrounding the attack and subsequent postponement of the Sugar Bowl.

After waking up early that morning and learning about the news, Rutledge told SBJ there were about three hours of “frantic checking in with people,” before the crew met for a production meeting at 9 a.m. local time.

“While we were in that meeting [at the hotel], we had a security briefing from one of our ESPN security people, and so he was telling us some of the details and some things that we needed to know. We were told you can’t go anywhere without security, because at that point, nobody knew exactly what had gone down and what the potential risk was even to leave the area.”

Shortly after completing a College GameDay hit from the hotel and getting the all-clear to head to the Superdome, Rutledge realized ESPN wasn’t the only platform that required her coverage that day. Along with her planned duties on SEC Network, Rutledge would also have to provide updates for ABC News and Good Morning America.

“ABC News wanted a different type of information,” Rutledge told SBJ. “They were interested in what the teams were doing. They were interested in what I could tell them about the increased security specific to the Superdome footprint. They were interested in how this would affect the Super Bowl and things like that.

“[GMA] wanted to know how I would compare that game to previous Sugar Bowls I had covered and things like that — a little bit more of the personal touch.”

Rutledge did not leave her set on the sidelines of the Superdome  “for six or seven hours” with all of the requests she was getting across Disney’s media outlets.

It’s an impressive feat, albeit under tragic circumstances. ESPN, SEC Network, ABC News, and Good Morning America all serve distinctly different audiences. Those audiences also want distinctly different information. Sports fans want to know what is happening with the two teams involved and whether the game will be played. News consumers want to know about what public officials are saying, how law enforcement has responded, and the larger implications of the attack.

Rutledge was able to deliver both simultaneously.

“I don’t even think I had a note in my notebook about anything football related, because that felt so second nature in comparison to the notes I had jotted down, which were FBI and security and police dogs doing a sweep for explosives,” Rutledge said.

Unfortunately, that’s what was required of her that day. But it certainly didn’t take away from her actual football coverage the next day when she served as both the sideline reporter and halftime anchor for ESPN’s presentation of the Sugar Bowl.