Image courtesy of the Newseum A selection of stories by Niemans about the Boston attacks The explosions at the Boston Marathon made front-page news around the world, with Líberation in Paris, El … Read more
Brian McGrory, 51, was named editor of The Boston Globe just four months before the Boston Marathon bombings captured the world’s attention. Ten days into that coverage, McGrory spoke with David L. Marcus, NF ’96, the Globe’s former diplomatic correspondent, … Read more
In a breaking news situation, journalists get an adrenaline rush. There is a palpable eagerness to get the scoop, to be the first to bring the story to the public. In today’s world of social media, mobile phones, and real-time … Read more
Using his Massively Parallel Database (MaPD), MIT researcher Todd Mostak was able to visualize how quickly news of the Boston Marathon bombings spread on Twitter. His system can … Read more
Massachusetts Institute of Technology student Hajar Boughoula of Tunisia writes a message on the ground with chalk near a makeshift memorial for fallen MIT police officer Sean Collier on the school’s campus in … Read more
One tweeter boasted of a "game-changing victory" for crowdsourcing in the early hours of the Boston area manhunt. But what began as a low-grade fever on social media spiked with the wrongful naming of a bombing suspect. All the while, Nieman Visiting Fellow Hong Qu was testing his new tool Keepr as a screen for credibility and posting early results on Nieman Reports as the story unfolded. Qu and journalist Seth Mnookin, who tweeted live from the manhunt, write about how smartphones and their unprecedented power to publish require new journalistic tools and practices, while other Nieman Fellows consider the intersection of social media and journalism in the aftermath of the attack.
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