Tonight showed, yet again, how our current news system is filled with holes, and dying a very long and drawn out death. It’s not as if I’m the first to suggest this…it’s been coming for years and years and years. But in the past few months, it has become painfully obvious that both traditional broadcast channels and the trusted online news sources are both turtles to the hare of the social web.
At least 20 minutes before the first comment was made on CNN.com regarding Continental 1404 sliding off the runway at DIA, there were sizable reports coming in bite-sized 140-character chunks through the waves on Twitter. BreakingNewsOn was the one to hit first with the news: “BOEING 737 CRASHES IN DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT — LOCAL TV (BULLETIN),” just as they were the first to report the terrorist attacks in Mumbai a few weeks back.
As soon as I read the report, same with the first Mumbai chatter, I told the people close to me that might be affected to start watching for news and info, and then I started checking everywhere else for more information. In both cases, I had been given much of the important information before CNN.com had their “Breaking News” banner pop up at the top of their page. I knew the flight number, the flight plan, and the low probability that there were any fatalities.
In fact, before CNN.com reported, I witnessed at least two different groups of Twitter friends devolve into discussions about why Denver International’s Airport code was being listed as DIA in news reports, but written as DEN on Kayak.com.
Sure, they’re (we’re) all nerds that get distracted easily, but what that means is that this group of people had already started to calm down knowing that everything was likely going to be fine before major news channels were readying to give their shock-and-awe “breaking news” productions. We are witnessing the changing of the guard.
Even now, after the situation has come to a close and fallen off the radar of significance for most people (no one died, so people don’t have to stay glued to the news…sad, but true), there are still very few reports of what happened…except for Mike Wilson, who was actually on the plane that crashed! He hasn’t been interviewed, hasn’t been debriefed, but keeps on tweeting things like “You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can’t even get a vodka-tonic. Boo.” This is just hilarious, and a little sad.
I guess changing directions for these guys is like cornering a semi, in the snow.
This is a fairly small-scale example of the failure and collapse of the old guard of journalism. The terrorist attacks in Mumbai at the end of November showed how a small team of citizen journalists lead by Dutch journalist Michael van Poppel (good interview here, article here and details here), can change the way people are informed of (literally) breaking news. Michael’s team at BNOnews.com were so many steps ahead of the “frontline” reporters, triangulating details, it felt like the rest of us had about a 20 minute headstart on everyone else. Amazing.
As our friends on Facebook were starting to pass messages around that something was happening in Mumbai, we were able to tell them how many attacks, at which specific locations, and rough fatality numbers that were much more accurate than what was being reported by other online news retailers (I’m not using that word lightly, either).
It’s time for news to decentralize. Actually, that has already happened…it’s time for the old guard to abandon their post and start to expand their sources, lest they be left in the dust. What other choice is there? My CNN Twitter update didn’t come until 3 hours and 28 minutes after I first heard the news from BNO. But this, again, shouldn’t really be shocking news. CNN bowed to the speed of the social web in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
What’re your thoughts? I’m terribly interested to see other opinions. Are teams like BNOnews going to take over the breaking news space? Are sites like AssociatedContent.com and NowPublic.com going to start to serve as our trusted news sources? Is BleacherReport.com the new CNNsi.com?
Chime in, let me know what you think.