Anyone who spent time online the previous week could
not have avoided being exposed to the horrific events of
the Mumbai terrorist attack on Thursday.
Those plugged into social media networks such as Twitter and
Facebook were privvy to a fascinating (http://mashable.com/
2008/11/27/twitter-search-mumbai/) but terrible phenomenon.
Online viewers the world over were inundated with live, up
to the second footage and news items channeling the Mumbai
carnage to their computer screens, literally as it unfolded. I was logged into Twitter (http://twitter.com/kalena) and
glued to my laptop screen all day. Several bloggers residing
in India's financial capital were live-blogging events as
they happened and many others who couldn't get online were
on the phone feeding updates to news agencies and social
media sites. To keep up to date, I relied on Twitter user @BreakingNewz
(http://twitter.com/BreakingNewz), who was apparently in
touch with several witnesses, hostages and even military
personnel that were live at the scene. The updates I was
seeing were minutes, and in some cases, hours ahead of news
agencies such as CNN and Reuters. In fact, the news was so instantaneous that Mumbai police
had to step in and ask several live bloggers and Twitterers
(including BreakingNewz) to stop the updates
(http://twitter.com/BreakingNewz/status/1025787848) as they
were undermining military operations underway to thwart the
terrorists and rescue hostages. Apparently the terrorists
were using the live Internet feeds to pinpoint the location
of police determined to stop them. Which brings up an interesting point: does the immediacy of
social media have the ability to kill off traditional news
agencies such as CNN and BBC? According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnn),
CNN airs to more than 1.5 billion people in over 212
countries and territories. Impressive, but the Internet has
a wider reach (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm)
and faster growth. So what about on-the-ground reporters?
CNN is apparently second only to Britain's BBC News in
terms of the number of employed news journalists and
worldwide news bureaus. To that I say big deal. There are
undoubtedly more people blogging the news in better and
faster ways than CNN journalists.
More and more people are ditching their newspaper
subscription, switching off the TV and turning to the
Internet for their daily news fix. And why wouldn't they?
It's faster, cheaper and interactive. They can subscribe to
the feeds of digital journalists and bloggers they like,
they can search news by region, category or timeline and
thanks to social networking, can be informed the very
instant news happens in the world. So could the advent of social media signal the end of
traditional news journalism? Yes, I think it could. We've
already seen how the Internet has impacted newspaper
publishing (http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4605). Perhaps topical specialization is one answer to the digital
vs paper journalism dilemma. Maki explains it well in his
blog post The Future of Content in an Age of Information
Overload (http://www.doshdosh.com/
future-of-content-in-the-age-of-information-overload/):
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Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine
optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and
respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well
as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column
(http://www.ask-kalena.com/), Kalena manages Search Engine
College (http://www.searchenginecollege.com/) - an online
training institution offering instructor-led short courses
and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine
Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
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