Wednesday, December 28, 2005

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.
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