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| What made Boston the media's best and worst of times | What made Boston the media's best and worst of times |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Every journalist and media pro knows that the news business advances, the profession changes, and careers are made the closer we get to real time, to events as they happen. This has been the case pretty much from the JFK assassination right up to the bombings in Boston last week. Unfolding events mean there is a story to win. | |
| But the spread of real-time access has vastly increased the competitive field and the speed to publication and broadcast. Everybody is instantaneous, from great news organizations, to individual witnesses, to the peanut gallery rendering immediate judgment. | But the spread of real-time access has vastly increased the competitive field and the speed to publication and broadcast. Everybody is instantaneous, from great news organizations, to individual witnesses, to the peanut gallery rendering immediate judgment. |
| In a sense, the audience becomes part of the mishmash limbo that any journalist who has ever covered a live event has experienced. That undigested reality moment when there's no narrative, no "there" there. When rumors appear and disappear. When no authoritative voice can be found. When clarity is promised, but invariably delayed. | |
| That's now what everybody sees – that's the uncertainty that the audience has joined, perhaps even what it craves. | That's now what everybody sees – that's the uncertainty that the audience has joined, perhaps even what it craves. |
| Before everybody had real-time access, there was a sort of filter. Reporters were not first and foremost trying to get something new, or truly to find out what had happened; rather, they were trying not to miss what everybody else has gotten. Consensus was truth, and safety. | Before everybody had real-time access, there was a sort of filter. Reporters were not first and foremost trying to get something new, or truly to find out what had happened; rather, they were trying not to miss what everybody else has gotten. Consensus was truth, and safety. |
| Without that consensus, that leveling, we get chaos, misjudgment, opportunism, crazy risk-taking … as well as excitement and immediacy. Through social media and live broadcast, we get almost no filter. | Without that consensus, that leveling, we get chaos, misjudgment, opportunism, crazy risk-taking … as well as excitement and immediacy. Through social media and live broadcast, we get almost no filter. |
| We also get a power grab. At the heart of all this may lie a fundamental competition between amateurs and professionals, or between new technologies and old infrastructures. | We also get a power grab. At the heart of all this may lie a fundamental competition between amateurs and professionals, or between new technologies and old infrastructures. |
| On the one hand, there is a technology industry that has empowered everybody with the same tools as the professionals. On the other, there are the professionals, trying to apply their infrastructure to the new technologies. | On the one hand, there is a technology industry that has empowered everybody with the same tools as the professionals. On the other, there are the professionals, trying to apply their infrastructure to the new technologies. |
| At the Newtown school massacre in Connecticut, the judgment, mostly by the professionals, was that the amateurs were lacking: increasing, rather than lessening, the confusion. In Boston, the old media led the confusion – at least, in Twitter's estimation. | At the Newtown school massacre in Connecticut, the judgment, mostly by the professionals, was that the amateurs were lacking: increasing, rather than lessening, the confusion. In Boston, the old media led the confusion – at least, in Twitter's estimation. |
| The day after the bombings, various major news organizations went with an erroneous story about an arrest. This hit CNN hardest: CNN essentially played out and dramatized its desperation for the story, and then guilty uncertainty about it, on the air. It became its own real-time story. | The day after the bombings, various major news organizations went with an erroneous story about an arrest. This hit CNN hardest: CNN essentially played out and dramatized its desperation for the story, and then guilty uncertainty about it, on the air. It became its own real-time story. |
| CNN became its own parody, too. Shortly after 8.30pm on Friday, one of CNN's correspondents broke in on anchors Jake Tapper and John Berman: | CNN became its own parody, too. Shortly after 8.30pm on Friday, one of CNN's correspondents broke in on anchors Jake Tapper and John Berman: |
| "Jake Jake John you gotta come to us smell of smoke in the air is definite let me catch my breath we don't know what happened we can smell smoke … a dog we got a dog on its way barking whether this is a canine we don't know …" | "Jake Jake John you gotta come to us smell of smoke in the air is definite let me catch my breath we don't know what happened we can smell smoke … a dog we got a dog on its way barking whether this is a canine we don't know …" |
| And this for, as it turned out, nothing at all. | And this for, as it turned out, nothing at all. |
| Much worse than that was the New York Post, which, in its fight for survival, seemed to make a calculated high-risk bet on facts that nobody else was trusting. The Post was the anti-consensus. Or, in another sense, the Post, like some sort of journalist sociopath, was going with facts that it must have known would be shortly discredited: journalism as a bad check. | Much worse than that was the New York Post, which, in its fight for survival, seemed to make a calculated high-risk bet on facts that nobody else was trusting. The Post was the anti-consensus. Or, in another sense, the Post, like some sort of journalist sociopath, was going with facts that it must have known would be shortly discredited: journalism as a bad check. |
| NBC and its quiet, stolid, no-flash reporter Pete Williams were, by the instant Twitter consensus, the journalistic gold standard of the Boston story. At one point, it seemed that nobody was taking anything on face value until Pete Williams said it. And yet, NBC – which broke its rolling coverage again and again, with a kind of belligerent determination, for commercials, many of them feminine hygiene products for its afternoon audience – was itself unwatchable as it forcefully and opportunistically tried to defy real time. | NBC and its quiet, stolid, no-flash reporter Pete Williams were, by the instant Twitter consensus, the journalistic gold standard of the Boston story. At one point, it seemed that nobody was taking anything on face value until Pete Williams said it. And yet, NBC – which broke its rolling coverage again and again, with a kind of belligerent determination, for commercials, many of them feminine hygiene products for its afternoon audience – was itself unwatchable as it forcefully and opportunistically tried to defy real time. |
| And yet … how remarkable it was. | And yet … how remarkable it was. |
| "Wake up!" texted Leela de Kretser, my former assistant, who now runs DNAinfo, the aggressive local news site in New York, at 4.30am on Friday. | "Wake up!" texted Leela de Kretser, my former assistant, who now runs DNAinfo, the aggressive local news site in New York, at 4.30am on Friday. |
| You're missing the greatest TV news and Twitter moment ever. | You're missing the greatest TV news and Twitter moment ever. |