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live coverage

Bruce Bennett

The moment that the 2011 Stanley Cup riot began in Vancouver, The Globe and Mail alerted the world immediately through a live blog, tweets and pictures, and building on that instant reaction through in-depth stories, video snapshots of the riots and a follow-up wave of reporting over 72 hours.

The Globe's Vancouver news bureau was deployed throughout the downtown core during Game 7 because win-or-lose, there was going to be a big story in the streets. They were equipped with iPhones and ready to shoot pictures and video.

So when a crowd morphed into a mob, overturning a vehicle and setting it on fire — the spark to the destructive riot the night of June 15 — reporter Wendy Stueck and others were on hand, shooting video, bearing witness. Columnist Gary Mason was right in the middle of it, so Darren Yourk, a Sports web editor in Toronto, dumped his Twitter feed right into the live blog our hockey reporters and columnists had been doing during the game.

So when a crowd morphed into a mob, overturning a vehicle and setting it on fire — the spark to the destructive riot the night of June 15 — reporter Wendy Stueck and others were on hand, shooting video, bearing witness. Columnist Gary Mason was right in the middle of it, so Darren Yourk, a Sports web editor in Toronto, dumped his Twitter feed right into the live blog our hockey reporters and columnists had been doing during the game.

Mason had great details, such as the smell of tear gas and etc. We took the live hockey blog and shifted it into live coverage of the riot as soon as the street violence began. Yourk fed in pictures from the wire while Mirtle handled reports from Twitter, CTV photos etc.

Mobile device users were also able to follow the unfolding violence as some in the fan zone started to act out, here, and at this link the stream turned into full riot coverage.

To review the transition in the chat panel below, scroll to the bottom and click on the "Additional Entries: 10:34 - 1:12" link to jump to riot coverage (first pictures of fires posted at 11:02 ET).



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But that was just the start of days, even weeks of extraordinary coverage by the Globe team of reporters and photographers.

The first wave of coverage through Twitter gave readers an immediate, dramatic account of the riot as it rolled westward through the heart of the city. This was live coverage at its best — calm observation from professional journalists. That stream of coverage was punctuated by on-the-half-hour full updates from a writer in the bureau, providing a measured account that made sense of the chaos as it unfolded. And it was accompanied by video elements and photo galleries.

Screenshots from the homepage show the evolving coverage:

Violence erupts

Teargas used

The riot ended by 10.30 p.m. Vancouver time (1:30 p.m. ET), but The Globe was already moving on a second wave of coverage for readers overnight. There was, of course, a definitive text story of the mayhem. There was an exclusive story of the bravery of a small contingent of Good Samaritans, a theme that other media picked up in the hours that followed. Most dramatically, there was a narrated report of the first moments of the riot, fulfilling the fundamental mission of journalism — to bear witness.

More homepage screenshots from the morning after:

Shameful riots decried

140 treated at hospital

And we believe we were the first news site to use the now famous "riot kissers" photo as the main image for the riots.

Embarassment, shame in aftermath

Here's a YouTube playlist the Globe video team curated to capture the most arresting clips uploaded online:





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