Human tragedy, online and live

If you still “don’t get” Twitter as a breaking news source – but think you want to know – you should try jumping in with both feet on an event like tonight’s airline tragedy near Buffalo.

At around midnight, an unfamiliar anchor with a British accent – presumably with CNN International – broke live into CNN to report that a plane had crashed near Buffalo, NY, mostly just to introduce the live report from local WGRZ TV news.

Next, I peeked at the Twitscoop Tweet cloud in my Tweetdeck application and saw that “Buffalo,” “plane,” and “crash” were already trending high.

I really wish we could edit typos on Twitter because I promptly mis-Twittered: Buffalo Plan Crash: www.wgrz.com/

I moved onto search.twitter.com/ and searched for Buffalo just to get up to speed with all of the available reports.

I combined the search with twitpic to see if any citizen media photos came up like the photo from the guy on the ferry during the recent Hudson River crash, but without results this time. Maybe there just aren’t many iPhone-ers in Buffalo?

Much later, I did find a link to one photo on Twinkle, and a few more on Flickr. 

Combining the Buffalo search with “http” eliminated all of the individual comments that did not include links to further information.

Soon I found and Twittered the worst: Buffalo News reports 49 dead in plane crash: http://is.gd/jnAp

Next I discover and Twittered: Twitterer Keith Burtis reporting from near Buffalo plane crash scene: http://is.gd/3oS4

and then found a couple of graphic messages in his feed:

Holy Shit! A small plane crashed into homes a couple miles from my house! Jet fuel is spilling into the streets!!!!

Huge crater where the plane landed, and the home next door destroyed as well! #ClarencePlaneCrash

Next, I noted: AP says Buffalo plane crash occurred 10:10pm EST. CNN broke in at midnight.

Soon, I found: Another Twitterer near Buffalo plane crash scene: http://twitter.com/ItsJustDave Coincidentally, he had commented on foul weather much earlier in the day.

I also found and ReTweeted: Google map of general Buffalo plane crash area: http://is.gd/jnQa and several fire photos from Buffalo plane crash scene via: wivb.com http://is.gd/jnQt http://is.gd/jnQx http://is.gd/jnQB as well as: Buffalo plane crash story with AP photo at nytimes.com: http://is.gd/jnSs

Soon, that first local Twitterer reported that he had been contacted by MSNBC and CNN, and later by just about everybody else. Later on, he Twittered: If I do many more interview they are just going to get me balling my eyes out 

I found and posted some citizen journalist video from YouTube and – about four minutes later – I got a call from a guy at CNN who was hoping it video was mine, presumably to buy rights. A short time later, they had it in an iReport post as well.

Around 1:30am, a breathless and stuttering Anderson Cooper leapt back into the anchor chair and has been going on since. I study, teach do my best to practice compassionate  trauma journalism, and would prefer if he was a little less melodramatic in his delivery, but I have to admit they’ve been doing a very good – and generally very respectful – job overall tonight.

Finally, air traffic control audio surfaced overnight. It was posted on ireport.com, but it is not pleasant to experience. If you really want to know, there is a much longer version online as well.

Of course, my thoughts are with the families of those lost. I hope that everyone understands that I intend these efforts at social media analysis to help us all do a better job as we transition into the next era of journalism.

Rest in peace.