Citizen Journalists First on the Ground For Continental Crash

Some of the first reports of last night’s crash of Continental flight 3407 did not come from news crews, but from eyewitness reports — these days called citizen journalism. TVNewser reveals when the news networks reported the crash, but it’s how they reported it that makes this news.

In Breaking News 101 you are taught to open up the phone lines. It’s the best way to get reports from the ground. But with more video-enabled cell phone and mini video cameras, and the ease of uploading those video to the Web, getting video from a breaking news story is almost as quick as calling it in.

In the early stages of its coverage, MSNBC used YouTube clips from witnesses to tell the story.

As the story continued into the morning, CNN relied on iReports. CNN tells us that as of 1pmET they had received 63 iReports, 12 were approved for use.

One of the iReporters – Anthony Trigilio – was on the air with Anderson Cooper during the overnight hours. WGRZ also used Skype to transmit some of the first images. WGRZ’s coverage was then picked up by CNN allowing the rest of the U.S. to see some of the first video from the crash.

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