The horrific events at Virginia Tech this morning — the killing of “at least 21” (update: at least 31) are the top of everyone’s news in the U.S. The reporting, if you will, was enhanced by mobile-phone camera images that CNN is showing (available via the link above).
More and more major news stories will be amplified in this way. Spot news will be, in part, a citizen-captured phenomenon, and there’s no going back.
Also: Note the way the Roanoke Times is covering the news: blog-style. It’s the right format for this kind of event.
Flickr feed here.
Wired’s Threat Level has comprehensive links.
on Apr 16th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
[…] out the blog! Published April 16th, 2007 skynews , News business , Newspapers , blogs Dan Gillmor points to the ‘blog-style’ coverage of today’s Virginia Tech shootings in the local […]
on Apr 16th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
We are getting eyewitness reports in too…
Michael,
NowPublic.com
on Apr 16th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
[…] further, Dan Gillmor of Citizen Media points out that most of the news stories on US television feature a cameraphone video taken by a VT […]
on Apr 16th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Dan,
Your observations seem a bit tangential here.
You keep talking about the the media as a reactive process. What we call the “news” is reactive, it relates what happened. But if we (as in “we media”) could tell the story as it happens, lives could possibly be saved. But by 10:17am, the first account on the Roanoke Times (according to the timestamped reporting), it was a half-hour late.
You should pass this January 2006 IHT article to a larger audience:
Mobile providers resisting SOS alerts:
South Korea, the Netherlands and possibly even tiny Appleton,
Wisconsin, are starting to use a little-known but widely available technology called cellular broadcasting to send emergency text messages to mobile phone users threatened by weather, industrial accidents or terrorism.
But the global advance of the mobile phone emergency alerts, which are also being considered by India, Malaysia and Finland, is being resisted by some cellphone operators, who fear government regulation, increased costs and legal liability from false alarms, experts said. Some carriers, they said, are concerned that the technology could undermine the conventional short messaging system, or SMS, which generates the bulk of operators’ revenue from wireless data.
…
Resistance from large cellphone operators is the main reason cellular broadcasting has failed to make gains in the United States, even after the government’s much-criticized response to Hurricane Katrina, said Douglas Weiser, the head of the U.S. branch of the Cellular Emergency Alert Systems Association, who is based in Tampa, Florida.
Pretty damning.
And, btw, if you have another day at Nokia, I’d be curious what they have to say about such capabilities (granted, it’s the US Networks you want to speak with).
on Apr 16th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
[…] asset in the citizen journalist’s toolkit is another angle being picked up, by the likes of Center for Citizen Media Blog and others. Poynter Online declares that today is “destined to become one of those […]
on Apr 17th, 2007 at 1:08 am
[…] Center for Citizen Media: Mobile Phone Journalism at Virginia Tech […]
on Apr 17th, 2007 at 4:24 am
[…] Center for Citizen Media: Blog: Mobile Phone Journalism at Virginia Tech Dan Gillmor: “More and more major news stories will be amplified in this way. Spot news will be, in part, a citizen-captured phenomenon, and there’s no going back.” (tags: viginiatech cnn moblie citizenjournalism journalism) […]
on Apr 17th, 2007 at 6:10 am
It’s amazing how transparent the development of the story was from social to mainstream media. You can see journalists from NBC, NPR, etc, using blog comments and facebook forums to try to find eyewitnesses:
http://searchviews.com/archives/2007/04/virginia_tech_shootings.php
on Apr 17th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
[…] Center for Citizen Media: Mobile Phone Journalism at Virginia Tech […]
on Apr 18th, 2007 at 1:27 am
[…] for Citizen Media: Mobile Phone Journalism at Virginia Tech y Virginia Tech: How Media Are […]
on May 2nd, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Mobile is good thing, but sometime people are crossing lines.
permood
http://www.mobilemarkaz.com
on Sep 27th, 2008 at 10:19 am
[…] Gillmor from Center for Citizen Media Blog writes: “More and more major news stories will be amplified in this way. Spot news will be, […]