I started this evening making asparagus and watching Page One, the documentary about the New York Times. Early on in the movie, someone says, “News will still exist, but the quality will change.” That guy was right on, because I spent the rest of the night on Twitter reading about the Hurricane. During a weather crisis, no well-produced, rumor-free article can be as fast or as easily digestible as 1,000 people spouting information in 140 character increments. But the accuracy isn’t great. Every time I went back to Twitter after doing something analog, I’d read that some story I hadn’t heard about–like ConEd workers being trapped in a power plant–was a rumor. Fifteen tweets down, I’d see the story posted as true.
I still think it’s a little weird that tonight I was getting my news from the same place I get my retweeted GIFs. While 90% of my twitter feed was about Sandy, occasionally, there was news from a bar or a picture of the sunset in L.A. During a national crisis, can we all agree not to send foursquare updates in?