When Seattle-area media needed to capture the scene inside an Alaska
Airlines plane that made an emergency landing at the local airport, they
turned to passengers -- not just for interviews but for images of the
frightening experience captured by the passengers on their video and
cell-phone cameras.
Passenger
Jeremy Hermanns posted on his blog photos he took with his cell-phone
camera, along with a narrative about what it was like inside the cabin
(which also prompted a big discussion in the comments section of his blog).
Local news outlets, such as the
Seattle Times and the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, published some of Hermanns' pictures with their news
stories.
Another passenger,
Damon Zwicker, shot scenes inside the cabin on his video
camera. That footage
was
aired on TV station KOMO.
With more and more people using digital recording devices, maybe it's time
for media companies to start creating "citizen multimedia editor" positions.
That person's job would be to reach out to people in the community and help
them report, edit, and post their first-person multimedia stories, both on
the news site and on their own blogs. And not only on big breaking news
stories, but on all aspects of community coverage.
