"People who are savvy about how the Internet works don't even try to find breaking news on the Net." -- Richard W. Wiggins --The Effects of September 11 on the Leading Search Engine (First Monday)Wiggins made this throwaway statement in an article published October 1, 2001. How quickly things change!
In his defense, Wiggins was very quick to publish a thoughtful analysis of the ways Google changed during the crisis, paving the way for the introducton of Google News.
Wiggins was not wrong. I didn't expect to be able to find breaking news on the internet until I first used Google News.
What about meta sites like Fark.com? I often find news items there before any of the major networks have picked them up. There's a lot of be said for a huge network of independent nodes gathering and submitting news stories. If signal/noise ratio is a little higher than on the networks, but it's entertaining noise.
Yes, fark and slashdot are good examples of meme-spreading sites. Often I first see a meme there, then it appears on Wired, and then it makes it into the more mainstream publications. But Wikipedia is also becoming a force for organizing breaking news stories.