Saturday, April 4th, 2009...3:09 pm
What coverage of Binghamton, NY, shooting teaches about new media
The shooting in Binghamton, NY, Friday left 14 people dead, including the gunman who apparently killed himself, in a community center filled with people from other countries who were learning English.
The news is tragic, and I feel for the families of all those involved.
But I think the story provides a compelling example of how new media, social media and interaction on the Web is changing journalism. Binghamton is a bit farther than an hour from Syracuse, where I live and work. My newspaper, The Post-Standard, sent reporters, photographers and a videographer (full disclosure, my husband) to the scene and worked the story from the office. I wasn’t involved in the coverage, but I was following it on my newspaper’s Web site, CNN and the Press & Sun Bulletin, Binghamton’s daily. And I, along with some colleagues, was twittering our hearts out about the story, trying to get our respective audiences the most updated-news.
Here are some things I find useful about the way this breaking story developed, and how new media tools were used — well, I think — to tell the story:
- Reader/viewer interest in the story was intense and fleeting: At one point Friday, “Binghamton” was the top Google search, according to Google Trends, and the interest peaked rapidly. You can see now that it doesn’t even make the list. I think that’s important to note because to me what is says is: People wanted to know what was happening right away — immediately, in real time. The thirst for information was great and kept increasing. A newspaper alone could never quench that thirst, but a newspaper, a Web, aggregating to other news organizations, and using social media tools like Twitter can. The story will remain important in Binghamton itself and nearby communities, including my own. But it won’t stay a nation story for long. So the media must act quickly.
- Information changed and developed over time: Local and national media converged on the story, and news reports were flying and updating throughout the day. At some points, information that later turned out incorrect was reported over Twitter and on Web sites and blogs. The supposed-gunman’s name was released, but officials later said that name might be an alias. The gunman was reported to have been laid off from IBM, but that later wasn’t substantiated. Is this a problem? Well, in a perfect world, we’d get the complete story immediately. We don’t live in a perfect world. Stories change as new facts are revealed. Law enforcement officers put together information that makes what they thought before untrue. As journalists we need to be accurate, and to do that we need to quote reputable, credible sources. But even when you do that in a chaos-filled situation like a mass shooting, it’s impossible for anyone — police, witnesses, government officials — to see the whole story immediately. I think readers, at least most of them, understand that and appreciate being pulled into the story and told what’s going on as it happens. Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham once said “News is the first rough draft of history.“ We aren’t the final draft.
- Regular folks took on the role of disseminating the story: Many people whom I follow on Twitter who I know aren’t journalists took it upon themselves to update their Twitter followers on what was going on. Some tweeted links to blog posts or news stories from my newspaper, from local television reports, from the Press and Sun Bulletin. One woman I follow who lives in Binghamton and blogs about gardening tweeted what she was hearing from a neighbor. Someone else tweeted a link to the police scanner stream in Binghamton. To me that’s a crowd-sourcing triumph. Regular folks – readers, viewers – found this story so important that they wanted to spread the news and in so doing likely boosted traffic to their local news organizations. They did this on their own and invested themselves in the transmission of news. Today, on the Twitter stream, people continue to talk about the case: about planned prayer services, their feelings about what happened, government leaders’ response to the tragedy. This chatter would be helpful to journalists covering the story as leads and sources for follow up.
- Story was told on multiple platforms: What was happening in Binghamton was told through traditional stories, blog posts, tweets, video, slide shows, Google maps. People could take advantage of what they wanted to view, listen to, read. They could choose to examine all the information, or just get a short update. The New York Times followed the story on its “The Lede” blog, which gave brief updates, reminiscent of tweets, but with better grammar and spelling and greater length. The Press and Sun Bulletin invited readers to e-mail the paper if they were witnesses to the scene. My own newspaper offered readers a thorough aggregation of information, including links to other media organizations, along with original reporting. News organization generally do a great job of covering major breaking news, but to me this showed clearly how new media is changing how we do that for the better.
I’m sure I’ve missed a vital lesson in new media coverage of the Binghamton shooting, so feel free to post a comment and add to what I’ve said.
– Gina
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Edited: 6:49 p.m. Monday, April 6: Yikes. I had misspelled “disseminating.” Fixed now.
I'm Gina Chen, a 20-year veteran newspaper journalist who is studying for a communications Ph.D. I want to see journalism survive. I believe news organizations need to embrace new media, change their thinking, improve their content and innovate. Read more about me 
22 Comments
April 4th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I’m being a bit nit-picky, but it drove me crazy that many reporters jumped on the story by retweeting.
Let me use the Post Standard as an example(and the PS was just one of many): Did I really need to be tweeted by the family life, health and fitness and the general PS Tweet with the latest details?
Next time, please direct me to the reporter tweeting from scene.
While regular folk tweets are a wonderful source. Sometimes I want to hear it from a source I can trust. In this case, the PS reporter on site. Again,
the PS wasn’t the only news source plagued by this problem it’s just the example I referred to here.
April 4th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
A few of my observations about yesterday afternoon:
1) The tweets were indeed fast and furious, but people rapidly twisted the facts about how many were dead or inside or injured, etc.
2) This was definitely the first time I heard about a major news story breaking via Twitter. And I didn’t find out through official media sources (P-S, CNN, etc.) I thought that was significant.
3) Every small-market newspaper in the country should have a Twitter account or some way to get those real-time updates out there to readers. Even if they never use it for anything but breaking news, they can direct people there for live updates when those people crash their Web pages hungry for updates.
Nobody has the patience for the ‘refresh’ button anymore.
The Press Bulletin has Twitter account, but they clearly were not prepared to use it for something like this. They could’ve been the go-to source, but the updates were few and far between and everyone was going to CNN by then.
Hopefully there won’t be a next time for the Press Bulletin or the Binghamton community, but every paper should be rethinking digital strategy after a day like yesterday.
April 4th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
One thing I’m worried about, more as a citizen than a journalist, is how quickly and widely inaccurate information can be disseminated these days.
For example, in Canada, we had a shooting at a nursing home earlier this week, and even the early news reports on the wires carried huge inaccuracies (that three people were killed; in fact, two were injured, no one died).
Luckily, by the time our newspaper went to print, the reporters had finally talked to the authorities and gotten the facts straight. But by then, there were all sorts of stories floating around online.
I guess the flip side of that is when there are wrong facts reported, they can be corrected that much faster. But it still worries me.
April 4th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Gina, I’m also realizing a difference between reporting the news and providing analysis. Anyone can report what has occurred, but only journalists/the media will take the time — and have the resources — to dig into a story, provide analysis, etc. We need to have both.
Unfortunately, some of our media only report the news and provide very little insight. Those media outlets that we value do both.
April 4th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Jill,
Good point. Immediacy is one thing — and so is analysis.
I, too, hope that isn’t lost as news organizations reinvent themselves.
– Gina
April 4th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Shane, this is not the first time that the media has been alerted to a story because of Twitter. The plane that landed in the Hudson is one other and there have been more.
It is true that Twitterers got details incorrect, but so did the mass media on Friday. Everyone “ran” with what they knew/heard/believed. The good news is that once the information is “out there” people can see it and correct it. Information flows out and back in.
April 5th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
@Hannah Scissons – Hannah,
I think you raise an important point, and I’m really not advocating tweeting misinformation.
I think the important thing here is for journalists to rely on credible sources — police, officials, etc., in whatever they are reporting — not just on unofficial gossip. (Would be nice if non-journalists did this, too.)
For example, in the Binghamton case, officials initially identified the suspected gunman based on ID in his pocket. Media outlets reported it, and it got tweeted. Police later learned that name might be an alias, so they told reporters, who again reported it, and it got tweeted.
To me, that’s an update, not an inaccuracy because it came from a credible source (officials) who believed it to be true at the time.
For me, that’s different that tweeting what some guy down the street told you (or reporting that in a blog) when you have no idea if that person is in position to know.
Maybe I’m striking a fine line, but I think it’s an important one.
– Gina
April 5th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
@Shane L. –
Few points.
1. Not sure I agree with: “but people rapidly twisted the facts about how many were dead or inside or injured.” I don’t think it was people necessarily twisting the facts (although perhaps some did), but officials just didn’t know at first how many people were injured or dead. It went from 4 dead to 13 to 14 (I also heard unconfirmed reports of 15 or 16, which turned out untrue.) I guess it’s not unusual in a crime scene chaos for it to take police time to sort it out. I’d rather know the numbers as they come, than wait. With that said, I did find some tweets reporting mere speculation numbers, and I’m not thrilled with that.
As a journalists, I only tweeted numbers that came from stories that got the information from officials. I think that’s a safer way to go.
2. I think you’re totally right. Tweets weren’t coming from the newspapers initially (or in some cases at all.) It was coming from just regular folks on twitter. I hope that will change in time. I think the quality of tweeting a news event will improve when journalists are trained how to do it, and jump in quickly. They should be leading, not following.
3. Absolutely!! I don’t think most newspapers are prepared to tweet big news like this — but they need to be.
– Gina
April 5th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
@Bill Pfohl –
Well, one of the problems I think is that there was nobody officially tweeting the news event, so the rest of us were jumping in to fill that void. The P-S has a twitterfeed of it’s breaking news blog, but as far as I know nobody was tweeting from the scene, which would have been very interesting.
Can’t say I agree though that only one person should tweet. The way I see it we all have different audiences (me, Amber, Laura), so we hit different people that way.
But I can see it being annoying if you follow a bunch of reporters who are all tweeting. Not sure what the answer there is. We’ll need to figure that out.
– Gina
April 5th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
@Jill Hurst-Wahl –
Jill,
Good point — Mumbai attack, Hudson River landing, Buffalo plane crash — all broke through Twitter.
But this was certainly the first time a Syracuse-area story broke this way.
I agree with you on facts. You can’t expect instant news that has the forethought of hindsight.
– Gina
April 6th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Jill –
Correct, the Hudson River incident along with the Mumbai terrorist attacks remain two of the greatest examples of Twitter helping journalists and readers.
To clarify, it was the first time I personally got my news from Twitter first. And, while I agree with Bill (above), I read it on a friend’s retweet, not from a big news source.
So, while it can be annoying when everyone and their grandma RT’s, it’s important to remember we all have different friends outside the CNY circle. In my case, I RT’d three times mostly to get the word out on Facebook, where a majority of my friends are not on Twitter.
I also agree — the media was going with some loose facts in the early hours. Twitter is having an impact for good and ill.
@Jill Hurst-Wahl -
April 6th, 2009 at 8:34 am
@Bill Pfohl –
I felt that one of the biggest problems was that no journalists were tweeting. @pressconnects was being updated very infrequently while the crises unfolded. They did, however, do a much better job Saturday.
April 6th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Twitter is immediate communication. The problem with much of our media is that it is not immediate. Many media outlets have not scaled to be able to do real 24/7 news. Twitter and other social media sites are filling the gap. They are the town crier.
BTW in my car this morning, I heard one radio station pronounce that the 690 to 81 ramp was already closed, while another said that it was going to close after rush hour. And who was right? The first one. Obviously the second station didn’t have someone feeding it up-to-date information and perhaps hasn’t built a network of followers (even Twitterers) who are willing to do so.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
@Jill Hurst-Wahl –
Jill,
I think you sum it up well: “The problem with much of our media is that it is not immediate. Many media outlets have not scaled to be able to do real 24/7 news.” I agree that is much of the problem, and hopefully that will change as the media buys into things like Twitter more.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
@Gina Chen –
Yeah, and whatever inevitably comes next …
April 6th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
@Shane L. – Shane, I was a reporter for years…the one thing I hated was hurry up and wait. A crisis happens reporters are dispatched, they get to the scene. And many times they are waiting on someone…police, fire, politican etc…Its a great time to tell what ya know, what’s the scene like and you can do it from your phone…hell you can even upload pics!
The news media missed an opportunity.
April 6th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
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April 6th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
@Bill P –
I agree — tweeting from the scene would have really added to the coverage. Hopefully, the media collectively are moving toward that.
– Gina
April 7th, 2009 at 8:20 am
@bloggingmom67 –
I second Bill and Gina. I often think of how cool it would be if I’d been privy to this technology when I was a reporter. Think of all the times we hurry up and wait for information. A reporter could tease the next day’s news, make observations that enhance the pending story and maybe even get some tips.
April 9th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
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April 28th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
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