Josh Stearns of Free Press and Catherine Cloutier of Boston.com
Last Saturday I had the privilege of moderating a panel on “Covering Chaos,” a look at how nontraditional journalism and social media responded to the Boston Marathon bombings and the aftermath.
Panelists were three people who covered the events as they were unfolding, Andrew Ba Tran of Boston.com and Northeastern University students Taylor Dobbs and Brian D’Amico; Boston.com producer Catherine Cloutier; and Josh Stearns of Free Press, an expert on social media and verification.
It was a terrific event. Everyone, including me, learned a lot about best practices in reporting from the scene, in aggregation and curation, and in verifying the accuracy of on-the-ground reports in real time.
Cambridge Community Television, which organized the event, has posted a Storify by Cambridge media activist Saul Tannenbaum on our panel and the three that preceded it, which dealt with alternative online media in Cambridge, legal issues and new forms of digital storytelling.
In addition, Stearns, the hardest-working man in media reform, has published his keynote address as well as a blog post on misinformation and verification following the marathon bombings.
Photo (cc) by Christian Herold and published under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.