Strapped for resources, local coverage of Trump shooting all looked the same

State of play: Axios analyzed the home pages and lead stories of the largest news website in each U.S. state from 9:30p.m. to midnight on Saturday.

• Many local outlets posted the same stories, photos and headlines aggregated from a central desk at their parent company, such as Gannett, Lee Enterprises or Advance Publications.
• Nearly half of the local sites analyzed featured AP wire reports as the main stories on their home pages detailing what happened, instead of original reports.
• Independently owned papers, such as the Baltimore Sun and Minneapolis Star Tribune, featured original home pages, but they still linked out to aggregated wire reports from AP for their main stories.
• Several of Axios' local newsletters also featured reporting and links back to our site's national coverage Sunday morning.

Zoom in: The home page for every local site featured Trump's assassination as its main story as of 11:30p.m., but some sites took hours to update.

• A few sites did eventually update their home pages with localized takes.
• South Dakota's largest newspaper the Argus Leader, which is owned by Gannett, posted a story early Saturday evening to its home page about how South Dakota leaders were responding to the shooting.
• The independently owned Salt Lake Tribune posted a story about Sen. Mike Lee's response to the shooting on its homepage.

The other side: Gannett spokesperson Lark-Marie Antón noted that by centralizing newsgathering operations during breaking events, news groups ensure the most accurate information is delivered to their local markets quickly and efficiently.

• Sometimes that system can also benefit local papers within the network. USA Today was one of the first outlets to identify the name of the shooter early Sunday morning, and the local sites within its network were able to run the update immediately.

30 of the top 50 local news websites featured the historic photo, or a very similar shot, from AP's Evan Vucci of a defiant Trump raising his fist in the air on their homepage Saturday evening.

• Meanwhile, national outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times featured pictures from their own photographers, Jabin Botsford and Doug Mills, on their homepages. The NYT's Mills took the incredible photo of a bullet whizzing by Trump's ear that's gone viral online.

• Other local homepages featured images from other AP photographers, such as Gene Puskar, or other photos from Vucci. Several featured photos from Getty's Anna Moneymaker, who took the emotional shot of Trump bleeding and on the ground.

The big picture: This isn't just a problem at the local level. With only a limited number of outlets attending the rally, many national newsrooms also had to rely on reporting, video and photography on the ground from a few major outlets.

Yes, but: The overuse of the same photos, eyewitness videos and reporting from the ground can also pose risks.

• Multiple photographers worried privately in conversations with Axios' Aïda Amer that the viral images from the rally could turn into a kind of "photoganda," with the Trump campaign using them to further their agenda despite the photographers' intent of capturing a news event.
• A photo editor and photographer from a major news outlet said the "amount that publications have been using Evan's photo is kind of free PR for Trump in a way, and it's dangerous for media organizations to keep sharing that photo despite how good it is."

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to remove a section noting that NJ.com had not quickly updated its homepage with the shooting. (The lack of coverage attributed to its home page was actually from a subsection of the site.)