Maybe it's Called a Newsfeed for a Reason

Wasting my day away in a small study room on the barren seventh floor of the Davis Library, I was abruptly jolted from my focus by the sound of a less-than-confident voice on the intercom.  He was informing my fellow library-goers and me that the library was on "lockdown" and that no one was to leave the building.  I'm not proud of it, but I usually don't take the constant bombardment of 'Alert Carolinas' very seriously, but this time, something was different.

I immediately flash backed to the episode of Grey's Anatomy that I had watched last night.  The episode was about a gunman roaming the halls of the hospital, taking down any surgeon that got in his way.  Although a fictional series, I was shocked at the hospital's emergency plan- putting the building on lockdown, without patients or staff members fully aware of what was happening.  How could such a large entity allow one man to cause so much damage without a ready plan to stop him?

And there I was...  In this massive library, on a fairly-large campus, with thousands of students...  My only thought was that the same gunman would be knocking on my door in a matter of minutes.  Completely frightened, with my thoughts stuck on the recent tv episode, I initially felt confused and alone.  And then I remembered that I owned a cell phone.

While my first instinct should've been to check 'Alert Carolina' for an update, it sadly wasn't.  I pulled up my twitter newsfeed, which informed me of the situation with ease.  My feed was flooded with first-hand stories of the account, retweets from various chapel hill sources, cries from peers to remain inside, and prayers of safety.  

It wasn't until about four minutes had elapsed that I actually received an official update from Alert Carolina, confirming many of the tweeters' claims.  Apparently, others had similar experiences.  John blogged about his own disappointment with the long-response time of Alert Carolina.  He says, "The news traveled more quickly, and more effectively through a massive social networking site, and not an official first-rate University of North Carolina - approved system of communicating."

He asks why the school's system is much worse at offering adequate information to its students than the students themselves.  What does this mean for UNC's ability to protect its students and staff?  

Regardless of the implications of the shortfall of Alert Carolina, I think our personal stories in the crisis serve as a testament for the changing face of news and how we consume it.  News is and will continue to be crowdsourced to everyone who contributes to social networks and thought-sharing forums.  It was easier for me to simply click on my twitter icon than to search for a potential update from the school system.  And the fact that I completely trusted that I would be able to find news about the shutdown on a social media network speaks for itself.  

It wasn't until I got the full update from twitter and Facebook that I turned to Alert Carolina to verify the information that I had found.  As this article from The Economist suggests, "news organizations need to recognize that journalism is now just part of a conversation that is going on anyway."  News has become a conversation amongst individuals across different mediums. Legitimate news orgs and entities- like Alert Carolina- are becoming more and more of a source for fact-checking.

"The role of journalists in this new world is to add value to the conversation by providing reporting, context, analysis, verification and debunking, and by making available tools and platforms that allow people to participate."

The event from today, along with fellow students' insights, made me think a lot about what crowdsourcing means for the future of news.  If our twitter feed is where we get our updates, what does that mean for the survival of major news organizations? It's time to do some research..