Moblogs Seen as a Crystal Ball for a New Era in Online Journalism

“[S]ending still pictures from cameraphones to Weblogs is almost ‘no big deal’ among teenagers in Tokyo, Helsinki, London, Rio de Janeiro. However, instantaneous street video of world-class breaking news beamed directly to the Web has yet to occur.|A pivotal moment like this, balanced on the inflection point between the deskbound regime of the PC era and the necessarily more fluid and untethered mobile-and-pervasive era, is the perfect time to ask whether the inevitable media incident will necessarily lead to peer-to-peer journalism.” Howard Rheingold —Moblogs Seen as a Crystal Ball for a New Era in Online Journalism (OJR)

It’s something of a journalism cliche that TV news was invented during the coverage of the JFK assassination. While live coverage of Coalition troops charging to Baghdad was certainly gripping, the coverage was provided by professional journalists attached to military units.

On another note… I don’t want to sound like a spoilsport, but I think it’s intersting that Rheingold’s article about instantaneous popular journalism needed such a long introduction in order for it to make sense to the general reader. Just as Rheingold’s article needed to be contextualized by a careful editor before it was really useful, the reports of on-the-spot amateurs will likewise need some contextualization.