The New York Times's Brian Stelter put together a tick-tock on how the news of just what that announcement contained seeped out via Twitter, which exploded after Keith Urbahn, Donald Rumsfeld's former chief of staff, tweeted: "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot damn."
—Keach Hagey, "Twitter heralds big night of news," Politico, May 2, 2011

I sat in a maple chair by the president's phone, taking notes for the "tick-tock" accounts of the decision-making process that all the major newspapers would be writing that night.
—George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human, Little, Brown and Company, March 11, 1999

TICK-TOCK journalists' argot for story listing chronology leading up to a major announcement or event. ... A tick-tock (the metaphor, obviously, of a clock moving toward a fateful hour) is often written with boldface dates indicating significant meetings or preliminary events, and is more reportorial than a "think piece" or "thumbsucker,"
—William Safire, "The New Language of Politics," Collier Books, January 1, 1972