The front page headlines from the New York Times and the Washington Post May 2, 2011. I bought these papers to save the front pages.
Sunday night’s announcement that Osama bin Laden was located and killed, as the result of a U.S. operation in Pakistan, is no doubt historic. But its place in history comes not just from the end of the decade’s long search since 9/11; the way the story broke also deserves a distinguished mark in the record.
I will never forget sitting in my room watching my favorite prime time program, refreshing my Twitter stream, and seeing a single tweet from a reporter saying, “POTUS to address the nation at 10:30 p.m. eastern.” I follow nearly 1,400 people on twitter. The vast majority of them are journalists. And many of them are in political circles. But this was the only tweet mentioning anything about Obama speaking to the nation.
Immediately I began searching for more information. Was the tweet a mistake? No. The lone tweet was accurate and Twitter soon began waking up from its Sunday slumber to a chorus of questions about why POTUS was planning to speak at the strangest of all times to make news: Sunday night after 10 p.m. Whatever he was going to say was going to be big.
The press always knows what the president will say when he speaks. The White House is a leaky glass when it comes to speeches and remarks and there is always some degree of advanced information for reporters to broadcast. But not this time. Speculation was rampant as to what President Obama would say. Everyone knew it was big, but no one seemed to know what it would be. Continue reading
