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Twitter Gets the Scoop on Haitian Quake

by Matthew Zuras on January 13, 2010 at 06:20 PM

After a dearth of old-school, English-language reporting on yesterday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti, people were naturally turning to Twitter to share photos and news of this horrific event. Even the New York Times does not appear to have correspondents anywhere near Port-au-Prince, or even in the country; the top story on NYTimes.com today was reported from Santo Domingo and Mexico City. Therefore, it has fallen upon citizen journalists to get the info out.

The Web exploded yesterday with TwitPics and outpourings of sympathy as incoming reports told that hospitals, schools, and the National Palace had been destroyed by the massive quake. The Times' Lede Blog had to resort last night to posting retweets from people on the island, save some photos by Tequila Minsky, who happened to be staying in Port-au-Prince at the time. These developments are not dissimilar from the preponderance of tweets that followed the quake in Eureka, California on Saturday, when most major news organizations had the weekend off.

"Information on the full extent of the damage is still scanty," said U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon earlier today. As relief efforts and traditional news sources begin to enter the Haitian capital today, we are bound to see more. But, as we're learning that there are now possibly thousands dead, we're still keeping our eyes on Twitter for the latest news of the catastrophe. [From: NYTimes and Mashable]

Tags: citizen journalism, CitizenJournalism, earthquake, haiti, haitiearthquake, top, twitter

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