CBS agrees to stop tweeting Dorner shootout

Credit: Los Angeles Police Department

Credit: Los Angeles Police Department

In the midst of what seems to be the end of the Christopher Dorner manhunt Tuesday evening, San Bernardino County authorities asked reporters to stop tweeting about the showdown between police and Dorner at a cabin outside of Big Bear. The sheriff’s office said the tweets were “hindering officer safety,” after an afternoon where one more police officer was killed and another seriously wounded while tracking down Dorner.

CBS stations complied with the sheriff’s request, alerting their followers they wouldn’t tweet any more updates. Meanwhile, the network’s television stations and sister stations continued to broadcast live feeds of the situation from helicopter view. They even alerted followers to turn on their TVs to watch instead of following the feeds.

Knight News Challenge Winner Will Make Oral History App

A more public form of oral history, sure, but JFK found his roots in ancient forms. (Flickr Creative Commons: State Library and Archives of Florida)

We know the tumultuous start that the Twitter video app Vine had with their infusion of porn. With the Internet, journalists have infinite opportunities for trial and error in creating apps and programs for expanding their abilities to tell stories. Perhaps the most ancient and ingrained human form of storytelling is oral history. Many books have adapted this strategy to capturing the essence of an era or situation.

Now, Knight News Challenge winner TKOH wants to create an app to apply to this ancient form. Like Vine, TKOH’s app will benefit citizen storytellers as well as so-called “professional journalists,” those who will be dedicating themselves to such a stature in the future.

“It’s a need we all have,” Kacie Kinzer, of TKOH, told Justin Ellis of the Nieman Lab. “There’s someone we know, a friend, a family member, who has incredible stories that must be kept in some way.”

The app will be for mobile devices.  TKOH, a design studio in New York, won $330,000 from the Knight Foundation.