Boston Tragedy: What Can an Editor Learn From It

The story about Boston was a very interesting one for me to watch, despite the tragic nature of the situation, due to the efficient nature of the reporting done in the first few hours. With exceptions (I’m looking at you New York Post), the amount of information that was coming across my twitter feed at the time of the bombings was remarkable, and the vast majority of it was at least marginally accurate. The main issue I had was with the fact that people kept running the story that the police shut down the cell coverage to Boston in order to stop bombs. A quick search through the internet revealed that this was obviously not the case, and showed that any amount of reporting done by the major news networks instead of just reading their twitter feeds would have corrected this error.

 However, despite the occasionally shoddy reporting, the amount of information available when the story broke was pretty incredible. A quick sweep of my twitter and I had all of the information that would be available for the next few hours, and anything new happening someone was on it. There was very little delay; mainly due to the effectiveness of twitter and the close proximity to the event journalists already were (due to it being covered already for different reasons.

I think one of the major ideas I can take out of this as an editor is to remember that stories like this get contained quickly, and if a reporter is not already at least somewhat in the area, that they may not get it at all. Possibly having reporters in different areas around the city may help with that, but I think the most advantageous thing would be to reach out to the people who are there already and make them into kind of honorary reporters for the day. Using the clips they shoot, getting twitter and Facebook updates from these people, and trying to get in contact with them if there isn’t a reporter in the immediate area, can help fill in some of the gaps that happen immediately after a large event like this occurs. This can also possibly help with the lockdown by the government after an event, where reporters may be blocked off, having people who are already inside my be able to give some information about what’s happening, that can be used to start trying to confirm when talking to inside sources at government agencies.