To expand on my earlier post about Katrina and new media: This does look to be an accelerator for the acceptance of change in the who, what and how of information delivery:
"I think something very important happened in New Orleans," [Jeff] Jarvis
says. "Something profound happened in the news business when the
presses broke and the broadcasting towers came down… It’s a moment
we’re going to look back on from journalism schools for years hence as
a moment when the news business really changed."
"The best reporting in the world [~] no hyperbole, the best reporting in
the world [~] this week came from the web division of the New Orleans
Times Picayune, nola.com," says the Radio Open Source weblog.
Of course, it wasn’t just the web outlets of the traditional providers — Much of the life-saving information was coming out of blogs, some by professionals like Brian Oberkirch, some by concerned neighbors.
One key problem here: There’s no good way to separate your wheat from your chaff among the cacophony of blogs and wikis, and the MSM is doing a lousy job of making use of citizen contributions.