Unfortunately, not for a happy story, either. I am referring to the Jakarta bombings that occurredyesterday, and once again Twitter users were out in front of traditional news outlets. A user named Daniel Tumiwa recorded the first tweet on the explosions, which read: “Bom @ marriot and ritz Carlton kuningan jakarta.”
The list of big news stories broken by a Tweet is impressive and includes the earthquakes in China, the Mumbai bombings in India, and the United flight that went into the Hudson.
I am not sure what this trend means for main stream news outlets, as some will surely continue to predict their death, but I don’t think it means much. Most people in the world are still not using Twitter, and even if they all were to start tomorrow, I would think most would still seek out more in depth coverage than Twitter can provide with it’s 140 character limit per tweet.
However it is beyond interesting to get the perspective provided by regular people who are experiencing these historic events and talking about them as they are happening.
I think there is room for both Twitter and main stream news outlets in the coverage of breaking news, and I think they both bring a different, useful perspective. So it is of little use to compare the two, or pit one against the other. Having both is a great way to get complete coverage of an important event.
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