Today, at about 1:10 p.m., I was about to get in the elevator to go up to my seventh floor dorm when the power went out. I walked up to my room, ate some lunch, and headed out to go to class. When I got downstairs, I found out that the power was out everywhere and turned right around. With cell phone service down and the TV obviously not working, where did I turn to find out what was going on? The Internet, of course.
Similar to the September 12th example I gave in a previous blog, today's power outage will already be yesterday's news by the time the Miami Herald reaches your doorstep. Without online news sources, and a powered up laptop computer, I would have had no idea what the extent of the outage was or how long it was going to last (admittedly, I had some flashbacks to the 2003 blackout in the Northeast that lasted over a day). But on the other hand, what about all of those people who don't have a laptop, or even a computer at all? What if the news providers' backup generators failed to provide enough power to deliver the news? The truth is, while online news came in handy for me today, for a lot of people it probably didn't. So while online journalism is innovative and, in the eyes of most, better than any other medium, it is important to note that it is not always an effective source of delivering the news. And if it isn't, what is?
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