October 15, 2006

Talk about the acceleration of 24/7 news since September 11. On that day, we were not yet addicted to wi-fi or to perpetually checking our handheld devices for news updates. As yet, there were no picture phones in existence; today, there are an estimated 50 million camera-equipped cell phones in the U.S. (My friend, French journalist Alain Genestar, notes that if 9/11 had happened in 2006, some of the occupants of the twin towers would have photographed the unfolding events inside the buildings and then posted them on the Internet for all of us to see in relatively "real time.")

Now comes word (reported by Lost Remote and Jeff Jarvis, at Buzzmachine.com) that a Fox News photographer used his pocket Treo to broadcast live from the scene of last week's small plane crash on New York's Upper East Side. As much as we associate CNN with breaking news coverage, and Fox with televised bombast, it was the local Fox affiliate Fox-5 (WNYW), not CNN, that was the first to report the attacks of 9/11. (See page 25 of Watching the World Change.)