Tuesday, May 3, 2011

How did you find out?

With all the news and commentary that has come out following the announcement of Osama Bin Laden's death late Sunday, I find the commentary that Bin Laden’s take-down is a defining point for the millennial generation fascinating. My friend Matt Medved was lucky enough to be in DC at the time and rushed to the White House where he joined hundreds of other people, young and old, to celebrate. He tweeted, shot video on his iPhone and called me intermittently; I could hear the cheering and singing in the background. It sounded like the biggest party ever. The next day, I woke up and checked the mainstream news media and saw that it had been. I also learned that Twitter scooped the world. Many are calling it a defining point for citizen journalism. I loved my friend David Spett's commentary about Twitter breaking the news:

"Thoughts on @spj_tweets' journalistic advice here? http://bit.ly/kg1lzr "Wait for president" strikes me as naive and foolish."

"@spj_tweets Absolutely, be accurate. But why wait for Obama if you can confirm a fact elsewhere? Problem is with those who got this wrong."

Jumping off that, I'd like to share a post-Osama article by a writer from the Baltimore Sun that touches on both 'defining America's youth' and Twitter. Definitely worth a read. Check it out here.

Would love to hear your opinions. Do you remember where you were on September 11? Ten years later, the new question isn’t where you were, but how you found out.

Caroline

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