The Incredible Lightness of ‘Shared Tragedy’

In today’s digital age, the term “shared tragedy” takes us into an entirely new dimension of up-close-and-personal. The ferocious stream of raw imagery and unfiltered information that is force-fed to […]

In today’s digital age, the term “shared tragedy” takes us into an entirely new dimension of up-close-and-personal.

The ferocious stream of raw imagery and unfiltered information that is force-fed to a reeling public via social media is often too much to take.  And yet, that same insatiable desire for more information asfastaswecangetit is, while often macabre, is serving the greater good.

This social media, nanosecond tragedy, time hack is citizen journalism on steroids and it is saving traditional journalism’s backside big time.  The stream of images, homegrown boots-on-the-ground reporting, and videography are filling a gap that even the most deep pocketed journalism outfits can’t match.

Certainly, it’s always been the case that journalists can’t be everywhere; however, that was before everyone, everywhere, was a six-second video clip from the Correspondent’s Hall of Fame. For instance, takes this guy that shot the video below of the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas Wednesday night.  He can’t even orient his iPhone video “correctly” and yet, as I write this, his video stood at 2.8 million views and I just checked… it’s up to 4.6 MILLION now…).

[Warning, the following video has disturbing images and audio.]

Meanwhile, the team at Honda produces luscious “Power of Dreams” series that garner at most a couple hundred thousand hits and most of them far less. Go figure…

My point here is that we shouldn’t dismiss this volunteer journalistic army, even if it does tilt heavily toward voyeuristic.  In fact, we need to embrace it in an even bigger way, we need to cultivate it, “train it” (it can be done; I’ve helped do it via my own Citizen Journalism Bootcamp weekends… send me a private message for more on this if you’d like to sponsor such a weekend).

Resources aren’t scarce, they’re just all over the place and need to be “harnessed” is all.  The time is coming… it’s coming… trust me on this.

Meeks out…

 

 

About brock

Brock is currently the Executive Editor at Atlantic Media Strategies and former Chief Washington Correspondent for MSNBC; he is the founder/creator/editor of CyberWire Dispatch, the Net's pioneering online journalistic news service. Previously he was the Director of Communications for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a non-profit, Washington, D.C.-based public interest group working to keep the Internet open, innovative and free. The views expressed here are his alone and do not reflect the opinions, attitudes or policy positions of his employer(s) past or present.