I was up late. Writing. A blog about something completely off topic. Across my computer screen, I read a tweet that there was an active shooter on the campus of MIT. Officer shot. Everyone stay indoors. My six week old son was safe inside our home, soundly asleep with his mother in the other room. I was still working. It was late. Having covered the Boston Marathon bombings all week, something didn’t seem right. I tweeted. BREAKING NEWS. It was retweeted over 6000 times and “MIT” quickly took to the trending topic leader board. The manhunt began. And so did my 405 tweet, 24 hour reporting of this unbelievable ending to a relentless week that kept getting worse. I poured myself a small glass of rum, buckled in, and began. I knew it would be a long night.
My first instinct was to look through twitter and find any more information about the shooting. I needed some audio. Usually I work to music, but this night would be different. Turned the Boston Police scanner on loud enough to not wake the baby. Not a lot of information on twitter yet, except for a few students who were scared to walk home to their dorms. I quickly flipped through the major TV networks, all of whom were showing repeats from earlier broadcasts. No one was live. Useless. I put my TV on mute and kept searching twitter and listened closely to the police scanner. robbery reported at 7-11. car jacking across town. two men with a “middle eastern” look had stolen a Mercedes SUV. officer at MIT has died. AAHHHHH!!!! taxi at the doubletree hotel. what was that about? campus still on lockdown. carjack victim jumped out the car at the gas station. the benz was heading to New York? shots fired. shots fired. grenades being thrown. explosives. watertown. watertown. watertown. they were in watertown!!! police under heavy fire. my TV was still on mute. they were still playing earlier broadcasts. everything was moving faster than I could type. my twitter following starting to increase by thousands by the minute. I took a deep breathe and realized that I had a responsibility to deliver the truth, no matter how ugly it might be, I was going to follow this through to the end.
I stayed up all night. For a few minutes, I took a break to change a diaper and to burp my little boy, but for the most part I kept my hands on my keyboard trying to stay ahead of the story. I never once turned on the volume on my television. I could tell by the images that they had no news that I didn’t have. And by the time they got a camera crew to Watertown and were reporting live, I had information 15-20 minutes before they did. I had developed a good list of people to follow on twitter, some on the ground, some reporters and some intelligence wizards. This would be the night that social media would become more reliable and quicker than print, TV and radio combined. I couldn’t believe that I was right in the middle of it. However, there were some incredible moves made by other members of the media, especially from the newspapers.
When the Boston Globe went all in and declared that the two men involved in the shoot-out in Watertown were the marathon bombing suspects, I knew print journalism would be changed forever. Their Friday paper was already printed, but they had just broke the biggest news in the world. On their website, they immediately ran with a headline of their declaration. No longer would the front page be what you read when you bought the paper in the morning, the front page was now and forever will be their homepage. The networks were pretending like they had inside sources, but most of their information they were reporting was from the police scanner as well. I could tell, I was listening. The only one to trust was Pete Williams from NBC News, but even he had some issues towards the end.
I knew my information was solid, although we did make a few mistakes along the way. Not nearly as many mistakes the mainstream media had made throughout the week prior to the manhunt. We were ahead of their reporting and they never caught up.
I stayed up all night for my generation who rely on social media for their news and information. a generation who no longer watches network news, most of whom don’t even own televisions. who no longer buy newspapers. who no longer listen to the radio. But, more important than being a messenger of news, I stayed up all night for Martin Richard. I stayed up all for Krystle Campbell. I stayed up all night for Lu Lingzi. I stayed up all night for Officer Sean Collier. I stayed up all night for all of those who were hurt by those two blasts on Boylston Street. They will all forever be in our hearts and prayers. Boston Strong!
Michael Skolnik is the Editor-In-Chief of GlobalGrind.com and the political director to Russell Simmons. Prior to this, Michael was an award-winning filmmaker. Follow him on twitter @MichaelSkolnik
Here are all of my 405 tweets from those 24 hours:
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