Boston Bombings: News in Real Time

Last Thurs., Apr. 18 I was still watching CNN, horrified by the bombings on Boylston and now obsessed with the faces just shared by the FBI. I played those videos over and over again, as we all did.

Then, I heard there was a shooting and possibly an officer killed at MIT. Someone had the presence of mind to say that the Boston PD, Fire and EMS were on a live audio feed. I posted the following over the next hour:

1. Laurie Wiegler ‏@WriterWeegs 18 Apr

   Boston Police, Fire and EMS Live Audio Feed http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/6254/web … via @Broadcastify

   
   

   
   
2. Laurie Wiegler ‏@WriterWeegs 18 Apr

   MIT campus police officer shot | Metro News - WCVB Home http://www.wcvb.com/news/local/metro/MIT-campus-police-officer-shot/-/11971628/19811308/-/yskq5q/-/index.html … via @WCVB

   View summary
3. Laurie Wiegler ‏@WriterWeegs 18 Apr

   Now a #shooting at #MIT: MIT says gunshots were reported near the Stata Center outside Kendall Square 24 minutes ago, reports Boston Globe

   
   

   I knew immediately that it had to have been connected to the bombers, and was instinctively very worried about what would happen next. As I listened to the astonishingly clear audio feed, it felt like a movie: 
    Laurie Wiegler ‏@WriterWeegs 19 Apr
   

   1. Heading towards Harvard Sq., #BostonPD told they do have video in that Shell station.
      

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   2. Laurie Wiegler ‏@WriterWeegs 19 Apr

      Other 137NZ1 Black Mercedes SUV from Memorial drive gas sta - second man has darker skin. Both with firearms. #BostonPD, 1 went into Shell

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   3. Laurie Wiegler ‏@WriterWeegs 19 Apr

      #BostonPD says 2 Middle Eastern males, with guns, carjacked a Black Mercedes in Cambridge: license no. 137NZ1 I think...1 is 5'7"

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      All of this was new territory, me reporting on Twitter what I was hearing from the police. In. Real. Time.

      What news story posted tomorrow or next Thursday or three months from now in a magazine could possibly compare to this? I was getting the information live and reporting it live.

      Twitter: this is where the news is at.

      Or is it?

   The next morning when I found out about the shootout and the death of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and the confirmed and very sad killing of MIT's Officer Sean Collier, my instincts had proven  correct and the news as I'd heard it in real time even more incredible.

   
   

   As a journalist, I'll take any source, anywhere, anytime that can prove credible. I will take that source not for attribution, on background, off or on the record. I will interview that source while bungee jumping, polka dancing or eating squid. I will interview her through a German translator or while running a 102-degree fever if this is her only free window.

   
   

   I get the story.

   
   

   Only a hermit ludite would deny the power of Twitter and real-time news sources like the Police, Fire and EMT feed.

   
   

   Yet, only a professional can verify details, make sense of the drama, and dig more deeply to add color.

   
   

   It will be interesting in the coming years to see how oldsters such as I (those of us who got through college writing essays on Selectrics) can adapt.

   
   

   Fortune will favor the versatile.

   
   

   Tweet on.

Boston bombings and media scrums: Let's keep it professional

While watching coverage of the police and FBI and several CNN anchors go after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, my senses were so overly heightened that for a while, I took a (very uncharacteristic) nap, dreaming that my ex-boss told me my web site looked great, before springing to attention to continue watching the manhunt.

I was watching when CNN's reporter heard the gunfire in his earpiece around 7 p.m. Friday, then followed along as that middle-aged lady reporter with the pert hairdo was told to get out of the way by police. Sirens, screeching police cars, a populus told it's ok to come and then sorry, no it's not, go back in.

In the midst of all this drama, I wish the media had remembered that while it's important to inform the public, we neither expect nor want you to slither around the bushes behind that house where the suspect was holed up, bleeding from the head, in that poor guy's boat. ( By the way, why is there a fund to buy him a new boat? Shouldn't the cops and FBI already have cut that check? But I digress.)

Don't kid yourselves, broadcast media, you were tripping all over yourselves and your colleagues to get this story. It got sloppy at times, as when CNN's camera craned around quickly and got Lester Holt of NBC in its shot, albeit briefly.

At the media scrum, a militant conspiracy theorist reporter tried to interrupt proceedings, as he later did on Erin Burnett's show. Even after she told him to pipe down, he went on for awhile, distracting us, the viewer, from watching Ms. Burnett's perfectly poised presentation of the police activity.

I'm in the print media and don't typically cover manhunts and bombers and cities that close down, so maybe I don't really know what I'm talking about. But I do think less is more, more often than not, in most things. And in America, where bigger is always better and more is always better, aren't we just feeding the fire that these terrorists so despise? Why the need to raise American flags and brag about how we got 'em! We got 'em! As if this was a sporting event.

No, it was terror. The same kind of terror that rages in the Middle East, Africa, North Korea and many parts of the world most of us have never heard of, much less read about or explored.

The media needs to stand back, do its job, and not fight for ratings. And oh yes, I can do without the scary mood music and the graphic: "CITY UNDER SIEGE" visuals.