With all this talk about old news out­lets giv­ing way to social media, here is a story to consider.

This morn­ing I dialed into 5–0 Radio Pro, an iPhone app that’s a quite capa­ble police-fire-emergency radio scan­ner. After mak­ing the rounds of my reg­u­lar chan­nels, I checked out the cur­rent Top 100 and noted Nashville Fire and EMS in the #1 slot with 257 peo­ple lis­ten­ing. That’s odd because peren­nial #1, Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment, was in the #2 spot with 81 lis­ten­ers. “Some­thing is going on in Nashville”, I thought.

I openeded the Thom­son Reuters news app and scanned the head­lines. Bomb scare in Man­hat­tan… oil slick… Ken­tucky Derby results on a sloppy day… and noth­ing about Nashville. Per­haps Nashville in nearby Ten­nessee was hav­ing a sloppy day of its own? I checked the AP app, and sure enough found one story about foul weather and a few deaths in Ten­nessee and Mississippi.

So on to Twit­ter. A quick search of trend­ing top­ics yielded “Nashville”. Upon select­ing this, I was bom­barded by real­time reports from count­less peo­ple on the ground of an unfold­ing dis­as­ter. If you con­sider every 140-character tweet to be a head­line, here are just a few of the headlines:

“Wow. Nashville is under­wa­ter right now. My prayers go out to all the fam­i­lies in need.”

“If you have dis­as­ter needs, plz call 6152504300. The Red Cross has shel­ters set up across Mid­dle TN.”

“So flight from Tampa to Nashville is now can­celed. We are get­ting on a flight to Birm­ing­ham, going to attempt dri­ving home from there.”

“http://twitvid.com/RZMZM — Our back­yard Nashville, TN Flood, West Meade Nashville | just wow!”

“#nashville­flood Slideshow: Heavy Rains Douse Tenn. — Vol. 9: Click inside to look at some of the (cont) http://tl.gd/14dddu”

RT @StormTrack9: A large amount of flights are can­celed to and form Nashville. Please call ahead for your flights

This is what jour­nal­ism in 2010 looks like, and it is us. My heart goes out to every­one in the Ten­nessee / Mis­sis­sippi region.

Posted on May 2nd, 2010 by Sky
Filed under: Communication, Society, Technology