In today’s digital age, the term “shared tragedy” takes us into an entirely new dimension of up-close-and-personal.<\/p>\n
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<\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 And yet, that same insatiable desire for more information asfastaswecangetit is, while often macabre, is serving the greater good<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n This social media, nanosecond tragedy, time hack is citizen journalism on steroids<\/strong> and it is saving traditional journalism’s backside big time.\u00a0 The stream of images, homegrown boots-on-the-ground<\/a> reporting, and videography are filling a gap that even the most deep pocketed journalism outfits can’t match.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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\u2026 it’s up to 4.6 MILLION now\u2026).<\/p>\n [Warning, the following video has disturbing images and audio.]<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n