(Dammit just lost this post when my browser crashed. Trying to piece it together)
Josh Catone writes on ReadWriteWeb in the aftermath of Wednesday’s earthquake in Britain that
“citizen journalism tools being used by people who were on the ground in those areas [are] scooping the mainstream press.”
In his piece about this he refers to BreakingNewsOn a site that uses Twitter to report breaking news. I decided to have a look at BreakingNewsOn. Six of the top ten stories at the time I looked at it referred to traditional news agencies (CNN, ABC, New York Times etc.) as sources with no links. I think both have their place and Twitter and other micro-blogs are increasingly going to be the site of breaking news. However I think the majority of media consumers will for some time continue to visit sites such as RTÉ and BBC as their main news sources. Similarly I think we will see an increased use of Web 2.0 on traditional media sites. Having worked on a corporate-style news site I agree with the commenter who says “For the MSM to print unmediated chatter is expecting too much, surely?” although I imagine traditional news agencies will have to allow their reporters to do this more and more. The question “Who edits the news?” will generate even more interesting answers.
With the arrival of mobile video streaming from the likes of Qik (do those people know that we can see them all too?) we are also going to see more live video of planned and unexpected events. I think all these “citizen journalism tools” are brilliant especially if you can’t attend an event yourself.
Like the way I won’t be attending the BlogAwards tomorrow. The babysitter was sorted, Himself was roped in (if only in a let’s all go the circus frame of mind) but luckily I hadn’t reached the outfit planning stage when I was struck down with a nasty throat infection. Temperature of 40+ last night. Aches and pains all over. So it’s as well I wasn’t nominated. Really.