Sometimes the news is so big you just have to have the details right away, and the death of Osama bin Laden is a case in point. With a story like this, we’ll be hungry for the details for days, including reporting on some complicated questions. (Did torture help find him, or not? What did Pakistan’s military really know about his whereabouts, and when did it know it?)
If you’re like us, when you first heard that bin Laden had been killed, you instinctively reached for your go-to news source. What was that source?
But wait, this is a two-part question. With a story like this, once we know enough details we want to know what they mean. (Is al Qaeda done, or or should we stay off trains and subways? Where will our relationship with Pakistan go next? What does this mean for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?). And where we go for analysis is not always where we go for news.
When something big happens, who do you trust? Where do you go for news? Where do you go for analysis? And, of course, what outlets do you avoid in a time like this?
The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.