Tsunami voyeur

I just had to relay an interesting experience I had this weekend.  I think it's at least moderately interesting considering all of the recent discussions about the future of news reporting.

Saturday, in the aftermath of the quake in Chile as the world awaited the arrival of the tsunami in the Hawaiian Islands I found myself watching news feeds from the local TV stations on the islands as well as feeds from webcams and even individuals streaming from cell phones.  Then I pulled up a search on Twitter to see what the locals were posting.  At almost that same moment one of the local stations AND CNN both admitted to watching Twitter for eye-witness accounts.  They were all (CNN and the stations) using Skype almost exclusively to speak to their remote reporters.  A few were on (crappy sounding) cell phones.  They also showed Ustream feeds openly.

A couple of years ago this would have been reported almost exclusively via telephone - with a few satellite connections to the local stations studios and maybe some live reports from government offices.  Certainly no video within the evacuation zone.  With the rise of broadband, web cams, and streaming (and Twitter) in the hands of nearly everyone we now get to witness news as it happens. 

No conclusions or comments from me today.  Just recognizing the moment.