I woke up yesterday (7/7) to find two blogs (top of my blog roll) reporting abot the London bombing. Boing Boing had a link to Flickr photo sets taken in the streets, from TV casts and even Web site. But specifically, this chilling picture taken with a phonecam in the Tube. That one is still stuck in my head.
I rolled over to CNN, but didn’t even finish reading their coverage. I give CNN A+ for following all the journalistic style guidelines (that I remember reading about somewhere), and F for making the most boring, disengaging, uninformative account of the events. Tired.
Somehow I found a link to Wikipedia. Didn’t even cross my mind that people will create an entry on the spot. Guess what? It was straight to the point, very informative, and constantly updated. No style, all content. Even more, it was broken into sections, with accounts of what happened, responses from world leaders (skip), hotline contact numbers.
Citizen journalism. The people who deliver news that matters in a format that focuses on time and content. Because they can.
Will CNN be taking notes?
