Earthquake and Tsunami Coverage Relies on New Media

"So live news coverage in America is basically staring at webcams and reading wikipedia?"

Such was marvelously Tweeted by programmer and blogger Matthew Haughey Saturday referring to media reports from earthquake rattled Chile as well as Hawaii as citizens awaited tsunamis (h/t Instapundit).

I was also struck by this as I watched CNN much of the day for updates about the disaster. Much of the reporting was from citizen journalists via webcams, Skype, and Ustream.

Meanwhile, anchors were regularly referring to information coming to them by social networking websites such as Twitter.

Isn't it fascinating that as the ratings for most television news outlets decline, they're becoming more and more reliant on New Media?

Adding insult to injury, it's becoming clear that Old Media needs us more than we need them.

Somebody cue Alanis Morissette.