Back in the day, the savviest journalists used police radio scanners to track beats like city and crime. In 2015, we have upgraded to paid, free, even custom-built "radars" that use search, social or open data to generate insights into a) audience interest and response around news events by category, location, device, etc, b) social traction around topics covered by competitors and c) relevant sources or user-generated content around an event or theme.
Most of these are beginning to inform editorial planning throughout the day, alongside leading wires and publishers' own analytics.