iPhone is Changing Journalism

Let's face it. Newspapers are a thing of the past. So are magazines. TV's evening news is a fading memory. Especially for iPhone owners. I get my news first from the AP Mobile News app, then Slate.com, and by the time I'm done with my Reader feed on Google Mobile there isn't a current event you could surprise me with. A new wave of web-based reporting, dubbed "citizen journalism," is emerging. Earlier this month I wrote for the "grassroots citizen journalism" site Orato, recognized as one of the top twelve news sites by the 2008 Webby Awards and called the Oscars of the Internet by The New York Times. Another emerging "citizen journalism" site is Twitter. James Poniewozik of Time Magazine said recently of the latest brand of reporting:

Internet users don't hate the media. In fact, when given the tools by something like Twitter or YouTube, they want to be the media. People want the vetted information the news media offer--and they want to riff on it, respond to it and even, as in Mumbai, add to it.

Today a US Airways plane crashed into the Hudson River, miraculously, without killing any passengers. One of the first images of the crash to surface was provided by Janis Krums, a passenger on a nearby ferry, and his iPhone and TwitPic account. MG Seiger reported:

The picture was taken with his iPhone and sent via TwitPic, a third-party service which a lot of Twitter users use to send pictures to their contacts, to Twitter. While sites like CNN have some pictures of the downed plane, I have yet to see one as good as the one Krums took.

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