News and how we become the broadcaster.

Michael Surtees, the man behind DesignNotes, recently posted an interesting piece on new media’s role in delivering breaking news.

"Thinking about it now, the speed of events was pretty crazy. Within an hour and half I had learned that a plane had landed in the Hudson River, saw images within minutes of it happening, watched the rescue live, hearing survivors being interviewed soon after, and by the time it was over knowing that everyone was going to live – I was listening to music from A Flock Of Seagulls. All the tools that I used to get more info was available to anyone out there which was kind of cool in itself."

It is quite interesting to me as it is very similar to thoughts I had previously about people now being journalists and being johnny on the spot if you like. It follows on from an blog I wrote about fifth element a good few months ago. In the film there is a guy who is a famous journalist who is almost always live broadcasting what is happening to him and who he is meeting. Following on from that with the advent of camera phones and the like people are now becoming the journalist of our generation.

Another example of this would be the Oscar nominated documentary trouble the water about how a group of people stayed behind to film the storm that ripped through New Orleans a few years ago.