Stations Let Twitter Find Their Story and the People That Will Report it

It's amazing that in one breath the Mainstream ​Media will slam Twitter as a viable news source and in the other breath, turn to Twitter to get the story.

When two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, 1,800 miles away in Houston stations quickly went to Twitter to help them find a local angle to the tragedy.

The days have changed from when stations used to send a crew thousands of miles away to the scene of the story. Now they just go to their keyboard, type a few lines on Twitter and try to find a local person that saw something.

The viewers become the reporters and the station save big money in sending crews to far a way places. ​

Within the hour of the first blast, KPRC in Houston sent out this tweet:​

Just one minute later, KTRK sent this out on Twitter (You think they might have gotten the idea from KPRC?):​

But it wasn't just stations in Houston that were going to Twitter to crowad source. KEYE in Austin was looking for locals that where in Boston as well.​

And KWES over in Midland also jumped on Twitter:​

Basically the same message was sent out by hundreds of stations and media outlets looking for a local angle and turning to social media to do so.​

The way the media reports has changed dramatically and Twitter is a big part of it. No matter how many times the media slams social media, they use it as much as anybody.