This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss election coverage, blue screens, and audio engineering.
EMANUEL: I had the personally unusual experience of watching Donald Trump get shot live on CNN because I was visiting family at the time where it’s always on. It was a pretty surreal experience not just because of the nature of the news, but because I’m so used to watching the news unfold online, and specifically Twitter.
It’s such a common thing. So many people get their news this way, but to listen to CNN anchors react in real time while I confidently told my family Trump was probably just stung by a wasp or something before we realized what happened made it all ever weirder. I don’t think I’ve followed news on live TV since election night 2016. Ultimately, I couldn’t even tell which method for getting news was better in this instance, watching a live video feed of the rally with a bunch of talking heads speculating about in real time or refreshing a Twitter feed with a mix of experts, reporters, and weirdo randos doing OSINT that may or may not be useful.
I’ve been wondering if and when we’d find ourselves covering the election at 404 Media the last few months and the answer turned out to be this week, following the assassination attempt and Trump picking a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist as his Vice President.