Where Do You Go For Breaking News?

Comments (Archived):

1. Drudge.

   1. #upvoted

2. I find that Google News is now pretty good for breaking news. You can set your long list of preferred sources, and Google shows the latest breaking news, often I find very quickly after it breaks.In addition, for each breaking news story, you can launch a Live Follow page that keeps updating with new articles as they are published.

   1. Another nice feature on Google News is a panel with customization sliders where you can literally dial-in the topics and the sources to the degree of your personal liking to fine tune the content to better fit your interests.

3. Been following the news all night (EST) from Nairobi, Kenya. Bouncing back and forth between Twitter, major news outlets, and Live feeds from local news. Custom Twitter lists have been the best by far.

4. shouldn’t police comms be encrypted?the local neighborhood is the new tv news studio.

   1. I’ve often worried about this… clever criminals could easily take advantage

5. I use Twitter and in times like this, I’ll listen to the police scanner in the background.

6. All of the above with the CBS live video (http://boston.cbslocal.com/… in the background.

7. I’m an American living in India, and have been closely following Reddit and Twitter all day (US night), while simultaneously GChatting with friends doing the same. We’ve been piecing together whatever tidbits of news we’ve come across while acknowledging the tenuous nature of that information.We’ve entered a really interesting point in time with news collection, where the upside and downside of the crowd driving the discussion are have equal magnitude. I’m certainly grateful to be able to follow this so closely from so far away, but am wary of the speed at which false or unverified information can build into something damaging (to falsely accused individuals and/or to the public discourse at-large).

   1. yes, i treat everything i read in the blogs and on twitter as conjecture, possibly true, but not certainly true until confirmed by multiple traditional news sources. the key word is multiple

8. I start each day with a visit to news.google.com. Google News is a great front page news portal. I am often awaked by my NYT iOS app which has the highly timely feature of sending real-time notifications as worldly events are breaking and evolving. The alerts link to full NYT articles. I also really like the broadcast video summary service, Newsy.com. When all that fails, a Google search usually gets me a link to what matters if some big headline is breaking and I want to know the details.

9. Generally, Drudge for the headlines in a fast moving story.Living overseas, it has been a really interesting experience to follow what has been happening in Boston overnight (afternoon in my time zone). I have been using a combination of Reddit, Google Maps and online Police Scanners to get a real-time picture (complete with “fog of war” confusion) and found it to be better than much of the mainstream coverage.

10. For BREAKING News nothing can compete with Twitter. It is the apex in the Darwinian Evolution of breaking news.After the news has broken however Twitter is a claustrophobic echo chamber.A tweet this week said it well – “Twitter is always at its best in the first 5 mins after an event, and at its worst in the next 12 hours”

    1. Signal to noise ratio decreases expodentially

    2. Twitter was extremely valuable after Sandy, too. When we were trying to figure out when the electricity was going to come back, whether the water was safe to drink, etc…Though more recently, I found this tweet from the NYC Office of Emergency Management to be a bit, uh, uncomforting:

    3. absolutely.i’ve had this problem for years & personally worked on solutions, but the signal to noise ration… or the echo chamber, is really hard to deal with.

    4. Twitter breaks it, Reddit refines it for me. The comments are the community crowdsourcing all of the information WITH fact checks. And these fact checks are becoming the most valuable pieces of news considering the media can’t get their shit together. **plus, there seems to be a first-hand account or two that shows up fairly soon after.

       1. true dat.

       2. “Reddit refines it for me.” Yeah because Reddit’s been so accurate on this one (http://www.theatlantic.com/…

          1. If I believed everything I read on Reddit, I’d be a confused individual.

    5. Reddit for the generally-affecting breaking news; I’m not one to be watching my Twitter stream constantly as a news source – too much noise for me.

    6. I remember seeing that tweet. Exactly right!

    7. YES!

    8. “For BREAKING News nothing can compete with Twitter.”Value of breaking news is way overrated.Why is it important to know breaking news unless you have a specific need to know that news at the moment it happens?For sure there are people who need to know certain news in an instant for decision making, but I would say that for the large majority of people, knowing what happened at a later time is perfectly fine. Otherwise it’s just a distraction and only literally for entertainment value. I think the word is “infotainment”.I mean why does it matter to me that I know, as fast as possible, that a policeman was shot at MIT?And if a policeman was shot in my town do I need to know that as soon as possible?. Or do I need to even know that at all? The only reason that is even a national story is because it happened so close to what happened at the Marathon and it was in the Boston area. The media and people love those coincidences. A few years ago, at a different school in a different geographic area this wouldn’t have mattered at all to people.So I’m supposed to be happy to spend time and energy (unless of course for infotainment) because something that might be important locally happens where I am that I might care about?Back in the day people were roundly criticized as being couch potatoes and spending to much time watching TV. To me this is really no different. Everyone can really fool themselves thinking it is important to know that something happened somewhere else to some stranger and that is important to know (at all?) as soon as possible. It’s not. Unless this is your business or you have the time to spend on this because you have nothing better to do you are just amusing yourself.

       1. Agreed. But we weren’t debating the importance of breaking news or the possibile psychological deficiencies of needing to know what’s going on around the world in real-time.

          1. I know we weren’t. But news is way out of control as an industry in search of eyeballs to justify itself. Most of this stuff doesn’t really matter at all no matter when you find out.

             1. true,I do think our constant addiction to being in the know is psychological flaw

             2. it’s a powerful sociological currency

             3. Couldn’t agree more. They love to waste as much of people’s time as possible.

       2. totally agree breaking news is waay overrated

       3. disagree – this is one of those events that because of the people involved, we’re going to be having even more foreign policy debates.

          1. So to take part in that discussion, which will come much later, why is it necessary to know the events in real time or even at all until it’s necessary to participate in the debate?It’s impossible to keep up with everything that is going on. At the point it’s on the radar, most importantly, after the fact you can then pay attention and get up to speed if you feel you want to participate in the dialog.Additionally for every thing that happens where you could be right (not saying you don’t have a point just providing some counter points) you would have to spend much time monitoring what’s happening with things that will never end up getting discussed at all.Take the explosion in Texas, which, while important, is not being talked about simpily because it is overshadowed by Boston.

    9. After the news has broken, Reddit does help refine it and various news sources offer extended coverage though it is usually quite light in facts and heavy on opinions.To be a truly informed citizen on a topic that goes beyond breaking news like health care and gun regulation where do we turn for empirical data, structured analysis, and peer reviewed insights?With the vast resources of the internet, dedicated research, cross referencing, and lots of time we can put together a cohesive model on which to form a personal opinion, but there is little time for that level of commitment in daily life.I am reminded of Thomas Jefferson’s sentiment that “wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government.” I think perhaps many of today’s political and societal problems stem from a lack of quality accessible news that informs.Its time for a change.

       1. the internet gives us the ability to be better informed than ever before. all that’s missing now is a desire to be informed.

          1. It does give us the opportunity, but not the time or the ability.The amount of time necessary to do the proper research and vetting is beyond the capacity of most of our daily lives. Particularly on the wide variety of issues that impact voting.Many people do not have the capacity to evaluate the enormity of information available on the web and will find themselves assaulted primarily by conflicting extremes that rely predominantly on emotional appeals.To me the role of the news in this situation is to do that research and due diligence for us. Then to present it in an accessible manner to those that are not necessarily familiar with the subject and its nuances. It should enhance the availability of empirical data for policy debate.Where can we go for unbiased, well researched, intelligently presented, credible, peer reviewed, professionally produced, accessible news with depth?It may be that it exists for those with time and ability or those who are highly focused on a specific subject, but everyone votes and everyone lives with the consequences.

             1. Perhaps the real problem is one of subjectivity; what I regard as credible others likely would not. There are alternative news sources that aggregate information to reduce the time burden.

             2. Which do you recommend? I am always looking for more to try.

11. This list on Twitter is good https://twitter.com/meetmar…. But Twitter in general was tragically off in naming innocent people as suspects/perps (really sad). Pete Williams on NBC has the best national security sources so NBC is worth having on in the background.

    1. “NBC has the best national security sources”True and people definitely don’t put enough emphasis on the value of the sources to major media outlets.If you are watching Brian Williams and the Pentagon correspondent says something you have at least a reasonable belief that the information comes from a reliable source and you can assign the appropriate weight to the information presented. They have more to lose by getting you the wrong take on things than lower rung news organizations do. (Not to say they don’t get it wrong from time to time of course but then again the best or near best of everything will make mistakes.)

12. I am biased because it’s part of our company but The Atlantic Wire is doing an amazing job of rapid fire value added aggregation of traditional and new media.

13. During this crazy week I’ve found the combination of the BBC online and Twitter most helpful. Def. don’t get news from TV anymore

14. Twitter. News Sites, TV, Newspaper all seem like relaying news in slow motion (in that order of slowness) while Twitter is in realtime.

15. Out of curiousity, is there any particular reason why we can listen to US emergency services online? I am pretty sure that police in my country (Australia) encrypt their radios nowadays, so I don’t think it is technically possible to monitor them any more here. Just wondering why that isn’t done in the US…

16. Reddit with the police scanner updates, far quicker than any news outlets, some outlets starting sourcing the Reddit thread. Also twitter is great in times like when the bombs originally went off and you can aggregate multiple sources in times of confusion.

17. Twitter is great – much better than TV. But remember that w/any breaking news story lots of stuff you hear right away will end up being wrong. I’m also wary of police scanners as sources.

18. I use Twitter to start. I have a list just for news related twitter accounts – CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, BBC, etc… plus my local news stations and newspapers. After that, it’s a combination of TV and Websites to get additional details.

19. Twitter remarkable – scene from back yard in Watertown an hour ago here https://twitter.com/shawna_…

    1. And this https://twitter.com/AKitz/s…

20. It’s tough to beat Twitter on breaking news. It’s become the de-facto standard.For Reddit, I don’t go to their site which is a mess. I prefer their Alien Blue iPhone app which is pretty good.

21. Bloomberg is the fastest

    1. yeah i use to subscribe to bloomberg for this reason, but they just put out so much stuff…..i found it impressive but overwhelming

       1. Good sources federal reserve policy

    2. I’m watching Bloomberg live on my iPhone. Pretty good coverage of Watertown.

22. I’ve been on twitter following this. And yes, that’s where it breaks. BUT… Twitter just devastated an innocent person in the quest for “breaking”. This poor missing kid and his entire family has been traumatized because of Reddit and Twitter. Not a single news channel mentioned his name. But twitter convicted him. Terrible and shocking.

    1. Signal to noise ratio is problematic

       1. Feels like it’s worse than “noise” when people pick on a missing kid and virtually lynch him and his family while they are already traumatized by his absence. His family was receiving threatening calls. Very, very messed up.

          1. Yep, what going is showing the ugly underbelly side of the web

    2. Amen

    3. twitter is not something that can convict. i don’t treat it that way and nobody should.

       1. But people do treat it that way. We can talk about how they shouldn’t as much as we want, but mob mentality takes over. We can’t praise the virtues of crowdsourcing without acknowledging the vices as well.

          1. Agreed. The vast majority of people aren’t as smart as Fred and are more prone to mob mentality than he is. The people in the AVC community probably understand twitter better than anyone in the world, with the exception of people who actually work at twitter…and I’d guess there are even a few people in this community who fall for mob mentality.

23. LIADS’s comment is spot on, Twitter is great for breaking the news. Personally I hardly bother with the “news” anymore it’s just manufactured. The BBC and the FT are my go to if I do want to get my fill or a good overview of something that really might be important.My news is still the stuff I get via RSS but that’s not really news just stuff that interests me

    1. I’d give you +1 * 2 if I could; one each for the beeb and the FT.

24. Conundrum. The authorities have asked people monitoring scanners not to tweet updates. They suspect the suspect is on twitter. As we all are.

25. Twitter, for breaking news, no question. It’s infinitely better than network news.G+ one day after to get the best in-depth reporting about what happened yesterday.

26. i’ve always got my RSS reader open and check it regularly, so feeds from the kookosphere come in regularly. infowars.com and zerohedge.com are my go-tos.facebook is also a source, as i’ve subscribed to certain pages on fb. and once i see my friends talking about stuff, i’ll immediately switch over to my RSS reader with an eye out on what to look for. eventually i get around to google+, although i don’t find it good enough just yet.i hope people reject the idea of a shutdown. if you immobilize yourself, the perpetrators have won. protect yourself and live cautiously but without fear.

27. Twitter: BostonFacebook: Celebrating Mac & Cheese

    1. is that urban picnic post sponsored? because that will be an interesting situation to navigate as Twitter continues/ expands its future roll out of ad products… A week like this where news has been breaking constantly – and your feed (or the top) of your feed is muddled up with sponsored tweets from Amex..

       1. Nope – it’s a friends company that I like/follow. Straight forward feed.

28. Trust but verify. I trust that news on Twitter and in my Facebook feed is true. I verify at CNN.

    1. exactly

       1. This is admittedly only one example, and traditional media outlets have been wrong before, but sometimes Twitter and upstart journalists actually flip the script and succeed in verifying false reports that appeared on CNN: http://www.youtube.com/watc…There’s a weird interplay happening right now between traditional media and social media, whereby traditional media are going to lose audience if they can’t keep pace during breaking news events with Twitter and others. It really wouldn’t surprise me if one day a news channel were presenting “chatter” from Twitter with caveats that the reports are unverified, then verifying them via their reporters post hoc.

29. We are still going to have to fall back on traditional media for breaking news if the likes of Reddit are not able to cope with their own popularity during big news events – Reddit is currently down!

    1. Yogi Bera would have said: “It’s too crowded. Nobody goes there anymore.”Try their phone app Blue Alien.

       1. A Yogi quote always injects a bit of kindness into a day. Thanks, William.

    2. They’re being DDoS’d at the moment; https://twitter.com/reddits…

30. I’m watching the live stream and text from BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/w…They’re my go-to source for breaking news as they don’t tend to suffer from reporting before verification like another three-letter cable channel that seems to specialize more in newsy entertainment. Twitter can be too noisy in situations like these, but if I were physically in Boston now I would probably rely on it more.I love how the BBC balances information from their reporters with emails, tweets, and man-on-the-street reports from locals. It’s excellent coverage.

31. Drudge, without question.

    1. drudge is on the border of being a part of the kookosphere — some may say it already is. definitely worthy of the #kookapproved hash tag

       1. No doubt. He puts links together well.Nice to see a source that isn’t Administration lapdog.

32. The first place I go for breaking news is Twitter. I’ll turn on CNN and check online afterward but Twitter is always first.

33. TV and twitter.But most of Twitter is quoting TV

    1. lot of tv is quoting twitter too

    2. which is a good thing. because those are the more trusted sources. the thing that is great about twitter is it does real time and raw and old school and trusted together

34. Seems like the sites with the “inside” sources have the best coverage and this varies.

35. I go to twitter immediately. Yesterday, for instance hundreds of thousands of people went to the streets all over my country, Argentina, protesting against the government. It was riddiculous. Is the third BIG protest in 8 months.Its amazing how social media brings people toghether.This was the sigth in meaningfull places (congress, ‘obelisco’, ‘plaza de mayo’, etc) all over Argentina: http://economiaparatodos.ne…

    1. that picture isn’t from yesterday

       1. glad they are protesting. what the govt is doing down in Argentina makes me cry.

36. I’ve been using nbcnews.com for over a decade now.

37. I get the breaking news from Twitter. Even if it leads me to mainstream media, it is still the place to see where new stories plus eyewitnesses are reporting. And when I was at the marathon bombings — Twitter was the first place I *sent* breaking news to.

38. http://nytimes.com

39. The entire incident was caught by @akitz on twitter. Bullet holes through the walls of his apartment amazing stuff.

    1. His coverage is amazing – he’s right there in the middle of it.

40. Twitter and reddit.reddit is quite amazing in this regard and I want to write about how it works in the next day. In short there is one person that acts as a hub for information. Most of the time several start with posts that recap what happened until now and add new information as it comes in. The best one of these posts gets upvoted to the top and as a consequence of this hundreds of people with information (from scanners, news outlets or from being on location) send their update to the author of the post. The author then adds the appropriate stuff to the post. And in the comments everyone else can drop their information without a filter. Votes of others confirm or deny the information or they add more as comments to the comments.

41. .Reuters, Bloomberg, AP, Drudge, HuffPo, Wired, Stratfor, PublicIntelligence for news.Twitter for signaling and buzz.AVC.com for serious discussion. Just a bit of pandering, ya’ll!JLM.

    1. AVC is exercise for the brain. Totally different because if you read something you can say something.

       1. .The thing I like the best is the authority and authenticity of the folks who contribute to the content. They know from whence they are speaking and they say it well.Yourself included.JLM.

          1. Thanks. (I’m even more authentic in person but not as authentic as I’d be if the internet didn’t exist and there was no worry about something that I said potentially getting broadcast.)

42. Drudge and Twitter.

43. IF there is a ceiling on Twitter, it is the requirement that you put some effort into setting it up.My feed – this is my fault I admit – has almost no Boston news in it.I use cnn.com, just because it comes to mind.

    1. That’s why there is the #discover tab

       1. When I go to twitter, I tend to search thru the feed, going ‘back in time’.For whatever reason, I just do not use the #discover tab.power of habits.

44. I follow Anonymous on Twitter (@YourAnonNews) for my news. I think after the CNN mis-reporting incident (in which Jon Stewart owned them by calling them the “human centipede of news”) I’ll continue to check out Twitter (and other sources) over mainstream media on television.Give me the facts quickly and impartially as possible. I’m over all the sensationalist/hoopala conspiracy theories for eyeballs.

45. @michellemalkin does a really good job of staying on top of stories while staying pretty careful for a biased actor.http://twitchy.com is an interesting presentation/use-case and I like looking through it.Edited: Was off topic

46. In breaking news environments you can follow certain threads quickly. The problem is when they unravel based on incorrect “sources”. Meaning you have to continue consuming the feed to figure out if the info you got was right or debunked – which can be seconds , minutes, hours, days….One stream snapshot view could leave you with wrong info.Unfortunately it’s the combination of sources ( for me new & old) that have enough correct threads to weave a coherent story.

47. Breaking news starts with Twitter. I learned of the story when I checked my Twitter feed late last night, watching tweets from people listening to Boston police scanners. Much speculation. Interesting to see comments on Twitter killing national TV news (CNN not on the scene but overstated). Followed a link in Twitter post to WCBV Boston local TV which had eyewitness reports from reporter Sean Kelly. I never would have found http://bit.ly/17L1pyn otherwise. Realized that I had seen pictures of suspected bombers on my Facebook feed, where I follow the Atlantic. Now listening to NPR, my usual news source. It is more so than ever, to borrow an ecommerce phase, an omnichannel news world.

48. Somehow, not sure how they do it, but Mail Online seems to break stories faster than other media outlets

49. I find the noise on Twitter difficult to get through – best feed right now is a ‘traditional’ media org that is currating/consolidating tweets:http://www.washingtonpost.c…

50. It depends on the news. For Boston events I have a tab with this Twitter list open. It’s being quiet informative so far (not the only one thinking it, I found it in HN and it has 1,7k subscribers as of now):https://twitter.com/dannysu…

51. Twitter. Then to the tv, usually CNN (unfortunately – it’s awful). Or I’ll find Al Jazeera English streaming online and try that if I want live video.

52. Actually, these guys are doing a good job of live video coverage http://www.aljazeera.com/wa…

53. I’ve just switched to Al Jazeera English Live on the iPad or web. It’s as good as any other & there are no global IP restrictions.They pinpointed the neighborhood & interviewing Watertown residents.

    1. “Al Jazeera” – I don’t read that but it’s an example of something that I would do strictly to hear how others think and to know what others are reading (for learning purposes and to broaden my understanding of human nature).

       1. Increasingly, the english AJE is looking more and more like what CNN used to be, but with lots of British accents. It’s run out of the UK, and with predominantly Western correspondents in the US.

          1. in the early 1980’s CNN loved CDN anchors, because they sounded a little British but not too British. Too funny – British anchor = trustworthy.

             1. True.

54. Not either/or for me. Watching this live on CNN, while on multiple online sites.

55. twitter all the way, for me. Henry Blodget and Joe Weisenthal have been doing a great job in my feed. It’s times like these that make me realize the power of twitter as something more important than what I think of as “social media”.

56. npr, twitter, and sometimes the nytimes

57. Twitter, follow what’s trending.. when the TV is around watch that in the background as it tends to be pretty reliable whereas the volatility of what comes out on Twitter is pretty high. Traditional establishments have more to lose by reporting stuff so they tend to veer on the more conservative side..

58. Best boston movie scene I can think of:http://m.youtube.com/#/watc…

59. Twitter, particularly reliable journalists. They have an ethical filter on what they post but bring breaking news quickly as they research a story.

60. A number of friends and former coworkers hang out in an IRC channel in freenode. The links people share there tend to be a sort of “best of facebook/twitter/reddit etc.”

61. First place I checked after twitter (what’s the news) and facebook (are my friends ok) was avc. I figured if Fred hadn’t posted this topic someone in the comments would lend helpful insights.

62. Twitter first, then usually head to a couple web news destinations depending on the story…

63. Associated Press’s android app. Either that or the people sitting next to me surfing the web.

    1. AP is extremely slow and too curated.

64. I tend to not react to stuff from twitter.WHY? I feel it is unedited and at times it can be wrong and I prefer to have news to be tempered a bit. I still seem trust NPR in the U.S. and BBC outside the U.S.

65. For those interested in staying informed, without investing a lot of time or effort, circa is good.Their reporters summarize major stories from respected outlets and break them down into phone-sized “points”. You can get through a couple points any time you find yourself with 30 seconds to spare.Best of all, you can “follow” an unfolding story. If you’ve already read points 1 thorough 9 of a story, and points 10 and 11 arrive, well, that’s what this app, and the entire reporting process behind it are designed for. The app will take you straight to the two new points you haven’t already seen.

    1. p.s. A little more on circa.During the time I’ve used it, they’ve ironed out some annoying bugs in the app, so that is nice. The downsides that remain, from my point of view, are:- There is some delay. Maybe an hour or so on average. Updates seem to arrive in clusters, as the newsroom pushes out a new round of stories at once, then go silent for a while. If you want to be the first to know, follow the main news outlets and curate some good sources on twitter. Nature of the beast.- It’s easy to get duplicate updates pushed to you by subscribing to related stories. Even though the app was made in order to fight this problem, there’s still a tendency for a big story to spawn a cluster of sub-stories exploring different facets.Right now, these stories are featured:“Manhunt continues for second Boston bombing suspect as city placed on lockdown”“What we know about the Boston bombing suspects”“Boston Marathon bombing suspects are brothers from Chechnya”If you follow these, you’ll see several items cross-posted between them. I’d like the app to do something like: “if item Y is a crosspost of item X, and the user has been notified of item X, don’t also notifiy the user of item Y”.

66. I’m currently at MIT Sloan. If you’re a grad student and near a crisis, school news can be reliable. Obviously this depends on the school, but I just wanted to salute MIT’s Emergency Alert service. Its been my first source of news all week via text and email updates. From the Dean: “If and when there are any additional MIT Sloan specific updates, we will be in touch. Otherwise, please rely on MIT as your source of news.”

67. Twitter has been my go-to of recent. I also for whatever reason go to cnn.com, maybe because my brain thinks it’s a valid place to check. But Twitter really is my go-to.

68. I am old school. I analyze the source of information and it’s usually someone whose profession is reporting (I don’t count the contributor-types on 24-hour news channels because they are just giving opinions, not facts). Then, I check against other trusted sources to compare similarities and differences in news. While Twitter is great for real-time news it is still a firehose of information that needs to be filtered.Also, I don’t want to be the guy who gives out false information.

    1. “Also, I don’t want to be the guy who gives out false information.”Would infer from that statement that in your upbringing, or elsewhere (school?), someone held your feet pretty close to the flame and perhaps questioned you and didn’t take on face value anything you said unless you could back it up?

       1. Facts and evidence are pretty good tools to have when making an argument for or against something. Also, I have been influenced by traditional journalism (particularly the book “unSpun” by Brooks Jackson Kathleen Hall Jamieson) even though we are in a “me first” world.

69. Fred in 2013 you don t need to go somewhere for breaking news. Breaking news just come to you. Somehow…

70. Interesting question. Regarding Twitter and social media in general, two real problems to consider have been playing out again and again this morning: potential to endanger innocent bystanders as well as law enforcement or compromise operations by broadcasting sensitive information and the echo chamber effect for old news – case in point twitter is aflutter with news about a search for a specific car, while other sources suggest that car was found awhile ago. So which is it? How can uncurated news be better managed to eliminate the cases for when it is destructive?

71. @wayne (a boston based entrepreneur whose company crashalytics was recently acquired by twitter) is doing an awesome job of live tweeting right now.

72. Fastlane.grasswire.com is an awesome project a friend of mine is working on that in my opinion is maybe the best place to get breaking news. They aggregate news from the web, social media, and other sources into a sweet feed that is as good as anything out there. Check it out.

73. Stocktwits.com is a great riff on Twitter. No one watches the news more than stock/commodity traders. No one.What’s going on in Boston is horrible-but so is the attempt at sending Ricin to elected officials and blowing up a fertilizer plant in West, Texas.

74. “because what is going on in Boston right now is dead serious”Unfortunately the way news is, and what it has become, and the way it’s now handled is simply giving wackos more of a reason to do bad things that will bring tragedy to more people. Copycats or copycats with a twist.The whole idea that the President travels to Boston when something like this happens, and so much focus is placed on the event, only insures that more people will attempt things like this (or new things) in order to get their moment in the sun.

    1. You might be right, but you might be wrong. At first I thought like you and didn’t want Obama here. But I watched the service and boy am I glad he came. That’s what leaders do. Inspire and help us move on with our lives.

       1. Have no doubt to the positive aspects and upside of Obama visiting.But as with any drug there are downsides and risks to consider. [1]You can’t justify strictly on the upside.The question also that I am raising is the amount of attention that is brought to events like this, whipping everyone into a frenzy and giving them anxiety, to the point of which we then need medication (like an Obama visit) to lessen the anxiety.Meanwhile, in communities across the country people are dying every day (and suffering for various reasons) and since that is not “acute” nothing is ever done and they continue to suffer.[1] In addition to whatever else I am saying it totally irks me the amount of time politicians in general spend on this type of thing or on other “commander in chief” photo ops even if they have a purpose and benefit. In the past much of this was done by the VP iirc. I don’t think this is the same as Churchill pulling a country together than is being bombed by the Nazis or something a President might do during the civil rights period.

    2. yup. i agree totally.

75. For breaking news definitely Twitter – although you have to be discerning on which sources to trust & careful about what, if anything, you retweet. Also concerned that tweets pinpointing excat police locations etc could put officer s in harms way. I tried TV news this morning but switched it off because there were far more ads than information and returned to Twitter.

76. “Does anyone watch TV anymore? Does anyone use the traditional media sites like NY Times,”I DVR and watch the nightly news while I exercise so it’s zero calories. I like to know what they find important because part of what they mention is then found to be important and passed down the media chain.Ditto for the NY Times as well. My phrase is “let’s see what the NYT thinks is important today”.I also read the NY Post (although I’m not in NY I like to get a brief amount of that trashy news to know what others are reading).Also the local paper site (Philly.com and local town).Hacker News and Techmeme. Google news on the iphone.

77. I’ve been watching NECN on TV since 5:30am. They have the best live coverage. They just interviewed someone who could interpret one of the suspect’s Russian version of facebook’s page. It had a violent video from Syria posted on April 9th.Until the police made the press stop filming live events of police activities up close around 9:30ish, I watched so much of this as it happened.

78. I looked at the recent breaking news on twitter-went to drudge, then searched via duckduckgo and found out a lot I didn’t know about Chechnya. I hesitated in the beginning of this fiasco to categorize-but I assume they are muslim terrorists working in an Al Queda cell

79. Local TV news in Boston for pix; twitter for the latest

80. If anyone saw the video of the shootout last night, it is quite possible that the second suspect went and hide and then died. All of Boston and the surrounding suburbs northwest are shutdown. Second press conference is coming soon.

81. New York Post, of course! Only 4Chan comes close!

82. Surprisingly (to me, at least), BuzzFeed is doing an amazing job with Boston coverage.

83. The reddit threads have been interesting. The first “think tank” produced 5-6 suspects, none of which ended up being accurate, but probably temporarily ruined a few lives.However, redditors did seem to find the first high resolution photograph of the real bomber once the FBI posted their blurry pictures.

    1. maybe not so temporary, those search results can live a long time. they might need to hire an SEO to clear their name. curiously other people with the same name may wish to hire an SEO.

84. Twitter, but there’s really no good place to go. Twitter and Reddit are full of conjectures, some of them will turn out to be right, of course. Traditional media such as CNN are on a race to the bottom to try to keep up with everything that gets thrown around on Twitter and Reddit. It’s not news, it’s all views.

85. Breakingnews.com compiles all of the relevant twitter feeds for you.

86. Fred, given the pretty obvious mishaps in identifying the suspects involved in the bombing, I would caution you as someone with a wide audience to really think about what you are saying here. While it’s true Twitter and other networks can give you a sense of what is going, I would classify this as breaking OPINION. Not news. Non traditional sources of information can awesome, but when it comes to judicial, public safety and legal matters it’s not clear to many readers that what is happening on Twitter is somebody’s reaction. Not the actual event or the facts but their reaction to what they may have seen or heard or even retweeted.http://www.newstatesman.com…

    1. how is that any different than “traditional” news sources, which routinely get stories wrong when they initially report them? the 2000 US presidential election was pre-social media and mainstream media totally blew it, calling the election incorrectly. regardless of what source people rely on, some level of discernment on the part of the consumer is required.

87. Topsy is an amazing company I’m getting to know. They have lots of free analytics and resources that cull through twitter and many other news sources. They have 1 of the most robust interfaces into Twitter’s API.see http://analytics.topsy.com/…, for example.

88. From here in Concord, MA: WBUR (our local NPR station), alternating between radio and stream as I commuted from home to the office. They don’t conjecture, and they’re not committing acts of punditry.

89. NPR and the Boston local stations seem to be more agile and careful than the other mainstream outlets. They aren’t as constrained by a camera placement.

90. Twitter – too much noise and crazy people saying stupid things for me at this point.CBC TV – Being in Canada – great down to earth reporting.CNN this morning – to get an up to minute update.TIME newsfeed online – good for work, to read the summary of the days events so I can get some work done:http://newsfeed.time.com/20…

91. Here in Lockdown Land, it’s past 5:00. Where’s the damn bartender?

92. i still use live tv, or tv, for news. sure, lots repetition and occasional triteness, but professional journalists with professional resources can aggregate, curate and synthesize information in ways that even the best social media simply can not.also, the bostonglobe has been an AMAZING resource throughout this nightmare. they deserve huge praise and gratitude form the local community (eg, people like me)my $0.02but fred, i assume much of what you get in your feeds is links, and when you click those links, where do you end up? dont you eventually end up at “traditional media sites like NY Times, Boston Globe, NBC, etc?”

93. never twitter – I try to follow people tweeting their own stuff and less so orgs tweeting news.I go to NPR and oregon public broadcasting for in-depth, and the google news button for breaking news.

94. I have been following Reddit because that’s the choice of my daughter who lives less than a mile from most of the action. It has been a nerve-wracking day and I have mixed emotions about the coverage, glad for the information but aware it is becoming an obsession. A few moments ago I came across an Amy Poehler video. I had no idea she has an Ask Amy series. The subject was how to deal with all the videos and tweeted pics and such. Her response was thoughtful and supportive of the good people of Boston but one line just struck me as so wise. “Be okay with letting some things rest in peace.”

95. Yesterday, for instance hundreds of thousands of people went to the streets all over my country, Argentina, protesting against the government. It was riddiculous. Is the third BIG protest in 8 months.Its amazing how social media brings people toghether

96. I still follow the news on TV. I was never really into following the news on Twitter because it could be overwhelming and the credibility can be suspect. But if used with care and professionalism like in the Reuters online coverage of the Watertown, MA arrest, online news sources can be very good.

97. Twitter then radio. I take Twitter seriously, but the cynic in me needs some confirmation of traditional media. Today I relied on WBUR, Boston’s NPR station. TV was just assaulting my senses, actually breaking the news, and showing me places I associate with happy memories. Also, I don’t watch much live TV anymore but I did catch some glimpses since we all couldn’t leave our houses today.

98. All of the comments calling Twitter “noisy” or “unreliable” are interesting to me. A lot of people have not discovered how to use Twitter. After all, the way the Boston police first notified the world that they had captured the suspect was via a Tweet.One does not simply “go” to Twitter 😉

    1. lol i had to make it…..http://cdn.memegenerator.ne…

       1. Damn, it’s breaking. I need to see this!

       2. Kid, I love it!

99. Twitter then if it’s a big story Wikipedia

100. If you don’t have time to sort fact from fiction, try public radio. Call it old fashioned, but it’s the medium trained to a)be fast, b) use good judgment and c) invite the audience to help figure out what’s going on. And if you contribute to support stations like WNYC, where I work, you invest in the capacity for quality journalism when crazy stuff happens and it needs sorting out.

101. My take on it … http://carl-rahn-griffith.t…