The new world.

A couple weeks ago the New York Times called and offered me, their loyal Sunday customer, two months of daily delivery free. I said sure. These days there are two papers on my doorstep in the morning — the Wall Street Journal and Judith Miller’s anguished employer. We are such a sophisticated, well-informed household.

Today’s NYT Page One was on London getting the 2012 Olympics, the Miller story, some other stuff. It doesn’t happen very often, but it happened today: I thought, oh, to be an afternoon newspaper when news is breaking in Europe.

But that’s yesterday’s thinking. The news Thursday was transmitted by bloggers, by cameraphones, by Flickr. (And yes, by the BBC, in its usual excellent form, but I’m talking what’s new here.) I don’t think so-called “citizens media” is the be-all and end-all — note how many of those Flickr images are screen captures of, oh, TV — but I certainly think it’s interesting.

I don’t know if this was the first breaking-world-news since NPR canned Bob Edwards, but it was the first time I noticed them going into CNN mode, with no regard for whatever the regular programming was — WDET stayed with the news most of the day. And there was a bobble or two, but it certainly beat 9/11, when I was driving to work after the second plane hit and my local NPR station was doing its fund-drive chatter. Or maybe it was a Frank DeFord commentary. Can’t recall.

Still on deadline, but relief is in sight. More tomorrow.

Posted at 10:05 pm in Uncategorized |
 

3 responses to “The new world.”

  1. colleen said on July 7, 2005 at 10:53 pm

    Wasn’t our fund drive chatter….we only chatter in Oct and April. We stayed with Morning Edition, which has been criticized for being slow on the uptake on 9/11. I think one of the network goals is to be able to respond more quickly in the event of breaking news. They did a nice job today.

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  2. Mindy said on July 8, 2005 at 7:00 am

    I remember that, Colleen. I also remember how the chatter was postponed for a week in favor of breaking news at the onset of the Iraq war.

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  3. mary said on July 8, 2005 at 10:43 am

    The local NPR station I was listening to switched over to an audio feed from CNN for most of the day. I don’t think I will ever forget Bob Edwards first giving the news that a plane had hit the WTC. I was sitting in the car, in the dark, waiting with my son for his school bus. We had just come home from NYC, and had just been at the trade center.

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