The Twitter stream alerted the news media to yesterday’s unfolding crisis at the Discovery building, reports Paul Farhi in today Washington Post. In a piece that notes that “Tweet stream alerts news media to the unfolding crisis,” Farhi reports that “for the raw speed and real-time eyewitness accounts, it’s now virtually impossible for the mainstream media to keep pace with the likes of Twitter. The service enables anyone equipped with a smart-phone to tell the world what he or she sees in 140-character bursts. “
News executives, reports Farhi, say that social media sources such as Twitter and Facebook are “now regular parts of the news ecology, serving as an early alert system.” On a different level, he also stated that there was poignancy, too, as helpless friends, sympathetic strangers and relatives tweeted their fears and concerns to a communal thread, or hash-tag called #discovery.