Is Twitter The News Outlet For The 21st Century?

From The Miami Herald:

NEW YORK -- Cassy Hayes and Jasmine Coleman were among the first fans to arrive outside the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles where Michael Jackson was brought and later pronounced dead.

How had Hayes, 25, and Coleman, 21, heard the news so quickly?

Twitter.

The two young women had learned about Jackson's health like so many who get their news nowadays: by reading the ever-flowing feed of real-time information on the microblogging service.

Read more ....

Update: Amateurs key to Iran reporting -- BBC

My Comment: The short answer is .... yes. Other mediums that will be used are blogs, facebook, internet forums, YouTube, and web based news services.

In the past, a country could control the media and its message by simply kicking out the foreign journalists. In today's world, the only way for a country to control its message and media message is to unplug their communications infrastructure from the rest of the world. This is an impossibility in today's world in which much of our commerce and business is conducted using these same networks.