Joanna Geary

The mainstream news isn’t going away, but with tools like Twitter, Jaiku, Seesmic, Kyte, blogs, IM, social networks, etc. breaking down the news cycle to seconds, they have to pay attention or continually fall behind.

Impressively, within ten minutes of the tremors, CSEM (EMSC), the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, revealed the cause: a 5.4 magnitude quake with an epicentre 10 miles north east of Lincoln, in the East Midlands.

Special shout-out to the Lincolnshire Echo. Not only did they post this story in double-quick time, but someone has clearly hit the social-networks to spread the link.

OH MY WORD!
WHAT DO WE DO!?
I know… we change our Facebook status….

I prepared a cheatsheet on how to successfully produce a multimedia story.
It goes over the need for planning, collaboration, innovation and interaction, and offers some tips on the use of video and data.

So I think that education has a rude shocking coming unless it gets ahead of this change and figures out how to become less of an institution and more of a platform.

Kudos to two of my student journalists who had the nous to report on last night’s earthquake as soon as it happened, using Twitter, blogs and the website.