lizlime replied to your post: An exhausting week, a relaxing weekend and a return to normalcy

I actually said to the boyfriend as it was all unfolding that I was really only listening to you and 1 or 2 others because I knew that way I’d be getting the best information. Kudos, you done good.

That’s what I like to hear! Thank you!

shortformblog:

• CNN Already facing a bit of a tough run of it, the media outlet screwed up a major story on Wednesday—falsely reporting the arrest of suspects in the Boston bombing. The network’s John King reported the news, which appears to have been a problem of poor sourcing that befell other media outlets like the Associated Press, but is only the latest knock to the network’s reputation, The New York Times’ David Carr reports. The network has some big problems that need to be addressed, and they go beyond adding opinion to the mix like their competitors.
• Reddit Less a media platform than an endless forum, it nonetheless became a target for scrutiny after a subreddit called FindBostonBombers, focused on crowdsourcing the incident, falsely targeted multiple “suspects” in the case, including Sunil Tripathi, a missing Brown University student. (The FBI released suspect photos in an effort to rein in efforts by Reddit and the New York Post, which ran one of Reddit’s finds on its front page last week. They’re not on the list, because really, they’re beyond saving at this point.) Reddit’s staff even apologized, a rarity. However, the approach is not without its defenders, including paidContent’s Mathew Ingram and TechDirt’s Mike Masnick, who both note that there’s a degree of inevitability to the situation.
• Social media Also targeted by the second-guessing was the rise of the social media journalist, which The Awl’s Choire Sicha called out, explaining that the bulk of the social media conversation that goes on “sucks for your news brand. Is it not stressful enough that your whole office is trying to verify and break news, to then have these people babbling on?” While Sicha has traditionally been cynical of journalists who use social media as a news platform, there’s a good lesson that can be culled from this, which is that we need to slow down for a second, because we’re getting a lot wrong. (Ed. Note: I know most of the people Choire called out.)

» So what to make of all of this, anyway? If you ask me, there’s a lot of hand-wringing people can do after the fact. Monday morning is coming up pretty darn soon, and quarterbacks are ready to throw up questions. And considering the unprecedented ways people screwed the pooch on this story, it’s fair. But let’s be sure not to let the navel gazing get in the way of the next situation. We should learn lessons from this and improve our own patterns, not talk about it endlessly. We also need to figure out how to wean ourselves off the drug that is banner-ad-dependent web traffic, because it’s not helping things. This was a bad week for journalism, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make things better next time. (Also, the guy who basically owned this story top to bottom, NBC’s Pete Williams, didn’t tweet once this week.)

Considering I am mostly a social media journalist currently, I have a lot of thoughts on this. Hopefully we’ll get to that in the next day or two.

After a week of independently covering the Boston bombings and doing some minor freelance work for a few organizations, it’s been a while since I’ve been so exhausted, especially from Thursday night to Friday night.

When the news broke of the shootout and chase happening in Watertown, I was just getting ready to go to bed for the night. I had got back to my room, decided to check Twitter quickly and immediately rushed to the police scanner (I know, I know).

I didn’t sleep until late Friday night after Suspect 2 was captured and the celebrations began.

It can be very daunting and mentally exhausting working as a freelancer or an independent journalist. There’s a comfort to having an organization behind you, especially with news like this. Then you can at least say, “Well, I’m covering it for [insert organization name here].” But even then, you get the people who ask you why you’re livetweeting something. I didn’t get anything like that over the last few days. I got a lot of praise, in fact – people saying that they’re the only journalist they trust right now or asking me to summarize things because they felt lost in the chaos. And it feels good. Sometimes you need that confirmation.

Minor Updates for the Week:

• Worked Buffalo on Tap (beer festival in Buffalo, NY) this weekend for my internship and got to interview a lot of lovely (and drunk) people. Oh, and drank beer. Lots and lots of beer. Prost!
• Wrote this guide on beaches in Buffalo and this guide on upcoming farmers’ markets in Buffalo. Working on one for this week about hiking. Can you tell I’m excited about summer?
• I start my new job on Thursday! Very excited and anxious!