Social media and news coverage

Last week US Airways flight 1549 crash landed into the Hudson River in New York City.  Within minutes, the major media outlets began to cover this event and broadcast the images of passengers evacuating the plane and standing on the wings of the downed plane.  Miraculously, all of the passengers and staff of the plane made it out safely and were rescued by numerous ferries that were nearby and saw the plane come down.

Everyone probably saw the major media news coverage, but who had the best coverage?  Probably some of the social media sites and their members.  Take a look at a picture a Twitter user posted of the passengers standing on the wing of the plane taken by one of the people on the first ferry to show up and rescue some of the passengers.  Probably haven’t seen any pictures as close as that one anywhere else.  One of the neatest things about this is that the picture was posted just minutes after the event happened.  No network cameras.  No CNN.  No Fox News.  Just this guy and his IPhone.  If you follow the link to the picture, you’ll see where he posted the linked picture on his Twitter feed (from his phone) and was later interviewed by MSNBC as an eyewitness.  In addition to the picture, if you go to Youtube, you can see some of the surveillance video that actually caught the plane landing in the Hudson.

This is definitely a different age and time than when I grew up (just a few short years ago), when you may have had to wait for video to be delivered and edited in a newsroom somewhere.  Now there is virtually no waiting.  You can almost watch events as they happen.

Tomorrow, President-Elect Barack Obama will be inaugurated.  Regardless of your political leanings or preferences, there will probably be more coverage of this event than ever before.  Not only will every news organization be covering the event, but so will the people in attendance.  It will be interesting to see the tweets posted on Twitter and videos posted on Youtube covering this event and the different perpsectives that will be offered up by those in attendance.

Have a great Monday (and keep your cell phones handy)!