Television viewers tuning in to catch updates of Monday’s shootings at Virginia Tech saw glimpses of the tragedy through Jamal Albarghouti’s mobile phone.
A graduate student at the school, Albarghouti was on his way to class when he heard gunshots and saw police responding. So he pulled out his Nokia Corp. handset, recorded 41 seconds of video, and e-mailed the footage to CNN through the news network’s I-Report service.
CNN paid the witness-turned-reporter an undisclosed sum, according to a variety of news reports, and aired the clip within half an hour after it was recorded. A variety of other news outlets picked up the dramatic footage, but CNN limited other broadcasters to no more than 10 seconds of the video, according to news reports.
Virginia Tech is-tragically-the latest site of perhaps the most powerful trend in wireless: citizen journalism. Bystanders with wireless phones have used their devices to record Saddam Hussein’s hanging in Iraq, the 2004 bombings in Madrid and, more recently, a fire burning near the famous Hollywood sign outside Los Angeles.
And in response to a large and growing video-equipped populace, various major news outlets have launched eyewitness services, allowing viewers to send in their own images and video.
“The monopoly that news companies had on first-on-scene reporting is gone,” said Leonard Brody, CEO of NowPublic, an Internet site that describes itself as a platform for participatory news-gathering. “More and more news collection is going to be driven by people like us.”
The Associated Press recently signed a deal with NowPublic to reprint its content.
Cellphone video on forefront of Virginia Tech news coverage
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