Citizen journos out perform the professionals

Here is an interesting post ( Hat Tip Andy Dickinson)

Bill Dunphy looks at the evolution of a news story a couple of days ago in Toronto when a propane depot exploded.

His conclusions

Bottom line - in aggregate, citizens journalists out-performed their professional counterparts getting news out faster, offering more details, and better images and videos. They also made more mistakes and had a high noise to signal ratio. Mainstream media were slow off the mark and while they depended on the citizen journalists, they failed to make the most of the possibilities that material offered.

Now we have seen examples of this in the Uk,the Bunsfield oil refinery and the fires at the Cutty Sark and the pier at Weston Super Mare being prime examples.

Obviously part of the problem is going to availability of staff at the site.citizens are by definition always going to be on hand at location and unless it is right on their doorstep,then it is going to take time to get there.

One thing that is often ignored though is the newsworthiness of the item involved and what other stories are being covered at the same time.

I have in the past been rather cynical about some issues where perhaps the story isn't that important in the context.The "earthquake" in the UK this year being a prime example of that.

Anyway Bill gives a synopsis of the coverage which is well worth a look and some ideas of how the professionals can perform better.