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Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

Born and raised in Austin, I always thought Texas’ capital, would be safe from, oh I don’t know, things like airplanes flying into buildings!

Credit.

We were horrified when my husband, also an Austinite, received a call from his father that a plane crashed into a building adjacent to his (my father-in-law’s) own place of work!  Of course my first reaction was to hop on to Facebook, so easy to do with my new Blackberry Curve 8530, and note the ‘news.’  Indeed, long after Josheph Stack‘s suicide blog was removed from its original site, Facebook and Twitter kept footage of the crash and original content from Stack’s anti-IRS rant alive and well.

It has been noted that an increasing number of people are obtaining news from online sources, and while this certainly effects television and newspaper industries, I think the most interesting aspect of online news sources is the following discussion at the bottom of the pages.  Comments on articles and subsequently on Facebook and Twitter allow readers to share their perspectives, and add information to the news story, helping readers to be better informed on the topic.  After all, the news reporters couldn’t have spoken to every witness or tapped every information source. Certainly we should all be wary of slander and unfounded gossip, but I think providing a variety of perspectives helps us to form a more collaborative history of events.  After being dependent on conglomerate news sources for the last half a century, we’re back to storytelling.  This time, however, its documented and global!