Saturday, April 20, 2013

Take on a social media event

While the world watched what can beat described by a live version of
24 culminating in the FBI and local police departments apprehendingthe
second suspect of the Boston Marathon, it became pretty obvious the
way we follow breaking news had changed. People were listening to
the live police wire from a link online, Reddit had become the new
Sherlock Holmes and Twitter was exploding with new details.

A buddy later emailed me, knocking CNN and the other traditional
outlets for being a half hour behind on everything and saying they had
become largely irrelevant because of social media. Although I do
agree with this, in part, this breaking news forum using Internet
anarchy, may break a lot of news but carries almost none of the
responsibility of CNN, the BBC and the print (although you may not
know that from the actions of the media earlier this week)
I have read more wild speculation, presented as fact, on sights like
Reddit, Footballguys and twitter than I care to count. Yeah, it is
the place I turned when I wanted up to date information but I also
'learned' that there were bombs all over beantown, there were direct
ties to Chechnyan rebels who were running the entire operation
virtually, the 19 year old was spotted in NYC, Obama was sending
troops to Chechnya and a ton of others

Obviously the traditional news-sites left a lot to be desired this
week as well but they have been taken to task for it. The random
@bostonlurker or @joey.baga won't suffer the same fate

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