By Lynn Walsh, Texas Watchdog

Growing up my eyes were always glued to news coverage. Whether it was a major tragedy (Princess Diana's death and the Columbine shootings) or a high-profile court case (O.J. Simpson) I watched ad national and local news outlets told the stories.

As a journalist there is one thing that's always frustrated me about big stories - there is very little follow-up.

Whether it is a national story or a local story, you will see non-stop, wall-to-wall coverage for a few days or maybe weeks, but then nothing (until the six-month or year anniversary).

Take the Gulf Oil Spill as an example. Almost every station had a live feed of the oil spilling into the gulf on their websites or TV coverage. The national news outlets covered it at least hourly and most local news stations probably had at least one story a day in their newscasts. But now, the coverage is near obsolete.

I think why the absence of follow-up in news coverage bothers me is because it is really not too difficult. As a reporter or a news organization you have already made the needed contacts, you probably have enough video and quotes to do completely fresh stories and you already KNOW the facts.

With the Internet and social media following up on stories is even easier. Here are some tools that will make follow-up stories a little easier.

Mark your calendar - almost every story is going to have future dates where something is happening. For trials it may be deadlines for appeals. For murders or other tragedies it may be deadlines for lawsuits. If there are audits going on in government there are normally lots of deadlines of when information is due. Elections have lots of paperwork deadlines. Take the time to write these down and save them to a calendar.

No new news does not mean don't report - Information that you get for a follow-up may no be that interesting. No one filed for a lawsuit or no new information was found in an audit. That doesn't mean people don't want to know about it. Will it go in your A-block or front page--probably not but there are other ways to share the information. Use social media accounts to send the update and link back to past coverage. Write a short blog about the update or have it going across the screen in a ticker.

Don't forget about the characters in the story - Sometimes you are not able to talk to everyone involved in a story (especially a victim or accused) continue to reach out to them even after the story leaves the headlines. If the story was big enough people will not care if a year or more have passed since the incident happened.

Legislation or new laws - Sometimes major events can trigger lawmakers to put laws in place to prevent the same thing from happening again. Keep a close eye on if this is happening and be sure to point out the connection. Sometimes the bigger story is that no one is doing anything to prevent it from happening again. That's when you can ask why and it could lead to a bigger investigation.

If the story was big enough to break into Oprah then it probably deserves some follow-up attention!