The blasts that hit central London today struck a city with vast experience in dealing with terror, its aftermath, and the issues underneath it.
It also represented the first time that the blogosphere actually gave better coverage to a major event than any news organization.
UPDATE: Media outlets like the BBC and GMTV are featuring calls for photos and eyewitness accounts as part of their ongoing coverage.
London suffered a decades-long IRA bombing campaign which killed hundreds. It was able to bring many bombers to justice, and discredit their cause in the eyes of their Irish-American sponsors, before finally reaching a political settlement which, while tenuous and setback-filled, is still an ongoing process.
Each time an event like this happens, moreover, we learn more about what citizens can do to cover it, and how media can adapt to citizen journalism.
The picture above, for instance, was taken by commuter Keith Tagg and quickly posted to photo-blogging sites like Picturephone. It's not a great picture, it's certainly not professional, but it does catch the immediacy of an eyewitness. That's probably why the BBC quickly adapted it in its own photo coverage, adding a second photo of commuters moving along the tracks from Alexander Chadwick.
The BBC Online site in general scored high marks for innovation and audience participation, teaching the important lesson that most people don't want to be journalists, but to be heard, and that those who listen will win their loyalty.
David Stephenson, looking to increase his exposure as a security expert, quickly linked to several important documents, including the London Strategic Emergency Plan, which guides the city's response to such events. (Does your city have one? Great follow-up story.) And John Robb offered the real low-down on all this at Global Guerillas.
Prime Minister Tony Blair also needs to be singled out here. He understands that, in a time of crisis like this, the head of government becomes, in essence, a mayor, and needs to act like one. He left the G8 Summit but didn't cancel it, quickly convening a meeting of his emergency committee, dubbed Cobra. (The Brits are much better at naming things than Americans.)
A blog called Geepster quickly linked the blast sites to Google Maps, using their API to deliver an excellent map and RSS news feed within a few hours of the event. Flickr created a quick pool of London blast photos.
Overall the blogosphere coverage of this act was an Internet year (at least) ahead of what we saw during the winter's tsunami, let alone the Madrid 3-11 blasts of 2003. The fact this happened in London had something to do with it. So did advances in blogging technology.
The question, of course, is what can we learn from this?
The British experience with Ireland should be instructive. It is possible to get inside these conspiracies. It is possible to steel people against terror, and train them to act sanely in the face of it. But the only way to stop it is to get to the root causes and find a political compromise.
This is possible within the current circumstance, but this path has been firmly rejected both by the American Administration and the American people. This was true regarding Ireland as well, and that war went on for decades.
Maybe, with Tony Blair in the center of this storm, as he was at the center of the Northern Ireland settlement, we might start seeing some progress.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Brad Hutchings on July 7, 2005 02:04 PM writes...
But the only way to stop it is to get to the root causes and find a political compromise.
How French of you. One important difference betweeen IRA terrorists (as despicable as they were) and Islamo-fascist terrorists is that the Islamo-fascists don't seem to care for their own lives. They want their 72 vegans and a mule in Heaven or whatever the hell it is their moolahs promised them. There is no possibility of compromise when two parties don't share some common valuation of something as basic as their own lives.
Even John McCain in on the TV now saying we have to take the fight to the breeding grounds (his words) of these idiots. The price of appeasement is much higher than in WWII or the Cold War. "Better red than dead" does not apply here. Blair's statement about wanting to "bring those responsible to justice" is the right sentiment to define how we prefer to play the game, but the reality is that those responsible aren't around anymore, and so we'll have to find convenient proxies to bomb the hell out of. Sucks to be them.
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