Citizen Journalists Break Toronto Explosion Story
I got home from my run today to see a Twitter message from Jeremiah Owyang about an explosion and subsequent large-scale evacuation in Toronto’s north end.
Yes, through the wonderful power of the web, the news traveled down to San Francisco and back up to me. A tremendous demonstration of the power of online communications, and of Twitter in general. However, it’s an equally powerful demonstration of the ability of citizen journalists to break news.
Rannie Turingan, aka photojunkie, captured the scene in both video and photo after the first explosion woke him at around 4am.
One of his photos made it on to the LA Times blog today. Owyang says Rannie had his coverage up before the press coverage started.
Skip to around 1:50 into this next video to see a spectacular explosion…
…and a close-up (language not safe for work):
The Toronto Star, National Post (which pretty much compiled this post completely through citizen journalists), Dose and other publications are all linking to amateur coverage of this event.
You can check out other photos on Flickr and other videos on Youtube.
(Photo credit: photojunkie.ca)
