Wednesday, January 15, 2014

The Hudson River Miracle Five Years Later

So, exactly five years ago today I was waiting at a car shop while my car was getting an oil change.  There was a TV in the corner of the waiting room, tuned to a national broadcast station and showing an afternoon talk show.  I was on my Blackberry reading my Twitter feed.  Suddenly I saw tweets from an NPR reporter that I follow that included news of an airplane which had just crashed in the Hudson River.  Then a couple of tweets appeared with images, dramatic images from Janis Krums showing a crowd of people standing on the wing of the plane with the New York skyline looming in the distance.  


It didn't seem real.  I keep looking over at the TV - nothing about a plane crash.  More and more tweets were rolling in on the plane crash and then finally later the afternoon talk show was interrupted by a breaking news story.  I remember thinking in that moment about the power of Twitter and that this medium held tremendous potential for citizen reporting. 

I blogged about the event five years ago and also recorded a podcast about my thoughts on that night - check them out here.  Interesting to looks back on that day five years ago.  Amazing.

Here is an interesting story, published today, on how Janis Krum's life has been impacted since he took that iconic picture.

2 comments:

  1. Social media plays a huge role in peoples life's today. I my self use Twitter to keep up to date on sports information. It is amazing to me how one small piece of news can travel through social media so fast today. There could be an explosion in the Philippines and the world would know about it within the next 3 hours. Although Twitter and Facebook can be good sources for news, it is also used to convey false information to the public. for example the Nick Saban too Texas scandal that was blowing up Twitter after the Iron Bowl. All of the accusations against Saban where coming from an unconfirmed source on Twitter. Most believe that Saban's agent leaked false information to an online source knowing that the source would take too Twitter immediately. Within days it was a Twitter storm, so much so that Alabama offered Saban a new contract with a pay increase which means more money for his agent. This is just one example of the way misinformation can also be spread at an alarming rate. For the most part Twitter and Facebook have transformed into reliable ways for every one to report or spread news. Even on the network news channels you see the anchors check their Twitter for updates on news that they themselves are reporting.

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  2. I agree with you that various forms of social networking seem to be fast replacing good old fashioned news.I know that whenever something happens in my home town, I find myself always checking facebook first.

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