Recently, I’ve been reading more and more about the idea of citizen journalist. These would be folks from the community who, by virtue of circumstance or desire, report on local news.
This blog, and others like it, are not examples of citizen journalist. Sorry Geoff.
In the past 24 hours there has been a shining example of citizen journalism, courtesy of a blogger who was on the Alaska Airlines flight that depressurized between Seattle and Burbank.
Not only did Jeremy Hermanns write about his experience, he took photos! There were others on board taking video on their cellphones. I’ve seen some of that footage on CNN and our air here in Connecticut.
Read the story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and then Jeremy’s blog entry. In many ways they are complementary, as the PI story brings nuts, bolts and overview, while Jeremy’s blog entry lives the emotion.
It is likely we’ll be seeing more and more of this, as we did with the London subway bombings and the Boxing Day Tsunami.
One of my surprises are the comments below the entry (which Jeremy says he won’t edit). It is startling to read the vitriol from so many small and vindictive people. It also seems some of the negatives might be coming from Alaska Air!