Ten years ago I spent weeks as a very young television news producer camped at a gas station in Northern Virginia that served as the temporary press center for journalists covering the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. It's growing harder to remember but this was during a time when if I had used the words "social media" my colleagues would have assumed I was planning a happy hour. Working in communications you're constantly stressing that twitter and facebook aren't actual media strategies but rather tools for getting a message out. That's still true, but social media has proved it may just be the new assignment desk. In a time before 140 characters and wall postings it was television and the teams of trained journalists and engineers that truly brought the story into the homes of millions Americans.
Five years ago I reflected on what it felt like covering history as it unfolded before me and wrote my first blog post on msnbc.com:
I... realized we all were doing what we could to get through the crisis. For me, bringing 9/11 to people thousands of miles away was a way to deal with this awful attack on my home. I wasn't a doctor or a firefighter but in my own way I could contribute -- I could be part of a team that was bringing this unimaginable story to people who couldn't see it with their own eyes.
In the five years since that reflection much has happened both to my own life and the media. Ironically both can be summed up with more blogging less television.
Last week I was tweeting with a journalist (once traditional and now digital) and reflecting on what the coverage would have looked like if social media had been around on that day. Would tweets and facebook posts have replaced confused newscasters on two second delay struggling to make sense of the unimaginable? Today's technology removes the filter allowing anyone to experience everything from the most newsworthy (historic news events) to mundane (anything a reality star is having for dinner) in real time. But returning to life as it was a decade ago outside the Pentagon witnessing history I pray will never be repeated, surrounded by hundreds of journalists, producers and engineers, TV was on top of the media mountain and knew it. Every American was glued to their set experiencing the event live with reporters. Flash-forward nearly a decade to this past May and the night US troops finally caught up with Osama Bin Laden and the news broke via twitter.
It's not exactly shocking that there was a leak before President Obama could address the nation, but it was surprising to watch traditional media channels hem and haw all night while the twitterverse reported the news as fact. To say nothing of the fact that the actual ambush was tweeted live inadvertently by one of Osama's neighbors.
As a life-long media junkie, I found myself glued to my twitter feed on that May night, just as so many Americans were glued to their sets a decade before. I thought a lot about that night twenty years ago when CNN reported live from Baghdad as US planes bombed the city. That live feed from a war zone revolutionized the way news was covered for the next twenty years. Two decades dominated by the rise of cable, a 24/7 news cycle and a LIVE LIVE LIVE mentality can all be traced back to CNN's big night in Baghdad. What most non-media observers forget is those live reports from inside a war zone are CNN's credentials. Before this journalism first, the cable news pioneer was most often described as the little network that could.
Now it's twitter's moment: Live in 140 characters from everywhere.
