Two teenage girls, Maria Niotis and her best friend Isabella Salas, were hit and killed on a quiet New Jersey street on September 29, 2025. Within hours, the teen accused in the double murder had been released from police custody, returned home and began a 22-minute-long Youtube livestream.
The audience found him before we did. In the hours after the crash, NJ.com’s social media and video teams were fielding a flood of comments and messages. Viewers had already tracked down the accused teen’s social media accounts, surfaced his history of on-camera behavior, and were asking urgent questions.
That audience energy drove one of NJ.com’s most ambitious social journalism projects of the year. Rather than waiting for a traditional longform investigation, our team moved at the speed of the conversation. We quickly pulled together breaking news reporting, court documents, AI-assisted video analysis, and direct audience intelligence into a four-part social video series.
The series launched one week after the crash, fast enough to meet the moment and thorough enough to be trusted. Each video addressed a different question the community was demanding answers to. Together the videos were viewed by nearly 1 million people across NJ.com social media platforms.
