If anyone thinks they are on to something about the arrival of the citizen as a news source, relax. It’s not a new movement at all. Mainstream media has always relied on citizens as news sources. Where do you think radio and TV stations got their news tips? Some were from “inside sources”, some were from the police radios, some were from PR people, and some were from canned events like press conferences. The rest came from regular folks who called the stations when they saw news happen. Many of the Top-40 AM stations in the 60s-70s actively solicited and paid for news tips. A girl in my high school was a regular news tipper for WCOL in Columbus, Ohio. She got $25 for each tip they used.

The difference is that the “citizen journalists” can now self-publish their tips. They don’t have to go through the filtering process that the news tippers go through. Not every news tip gets on the air.

This tragedy really showed how many relied on a variety of media. My experience was this: I found out about the story when I logged on to my computer. My home page is Dell’s news portal, and there it was. I immediately turned the TV on to MSNBC. I watche dfor about 30 minutes. There was a lull in developments (i.e. no new info), so I checked out Facebook and found some VT groups that were already active. I checked those out and found some of the blogs that the Facebook posters were talking about. Then I had to go to work, so I tuned in my car radio and switched between WLW-AM on my terrestrial receiver and CNN on my Sirius satellite radio.

The citizen journalists do serve an imprtant purpose in breaking news and supplying detailed eyewitness accounts. This is a major benefit to Web 2.0.

The MSM still have the power to get interviews with people that matter (cops, EMTs, university spokespersons, politicians, etc.). They can also tie everything together in one place, eliminating the hassle of trying to surf a number of blogs to get complete information.

I just returned from the Broadcast Education Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas. Some of the panels addressed this issue of the convergence of MSM and new media. VT could be the defining event in this era, more so than Katrina. College students were the focal point of this story, and their active use of new media drove the coverage of this event a lot more.

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/17089903.htm

Oh, yeah. ABJ takes content off line and places it into pay-per-view in 7 days. Don’t wait to check this out.

I guess I’m officially a relic, but the blogosphere and the TV coverage of the VT tragedy lack substance, context and perspective to me. They are great for immediate images and basic information, but both tend to carelessly point fingers, use unsubstantiated info and lean toward pursuing news angles that merely trigger emotional hot buttons – they shed more heat than light on a subject.

I did like CNN’s use of VT student media members, but I changed channels at the first sighting of the omnipresent Anderson Cooper, who I feared would lose his composure again as he did in New Orleans. I spent some time online, but Drudge Report and VT sites were the only online sites that I felt had compelling info. Overall, I found the coverage very repetitive, but respectable considering the mediums’ limitations. Stone Phillips (my wife’s choice, not mine) was too heavy-handed on the lockdown angle – but his hair looked fantastic! He and Cooper make me miss Peter Jennings and his calm, professional aura.

What I really wanted to point out was the value of the social networking sites. My niece is a 2005 VT alum and used her Facebook VT network to connect and mourn with her VT friends. I’m sure many other alums and students did the same. Say what you will, but Facebook does have redeeming value.

Yes, far more people are aware of May 4th, but it’s an apples-and-oranges situation to compare the sudden, unprovoked shooting spree in Blacksburg to several days of protests, vandalism, and looting that precipitated what happened in Kent in 1970–I mean, there were underlying reasons for the National Guard to have been on campus to begin with.

This is the point I am trying to get across.

The fact that few seem to recall it points out that, in retrospect, it was a small-scale event–but it certainly didn’t feel that way at the time. To paraphrase Tom Petty, we got lucky.

In today’s Beacon Journal, Bob Dyer looks at how schools must address the stigma of bloodshed on campus. Our own Michele Ewing is quoted in the piece.

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/17089903.htm