As awful as the news com­ing out of Mum­bai is, this lat­est tragic event is proof pos­i­tive of the power of social media as immer­sive, human, imme­di­ate and infi­nitely more pow­er­ful than the her­itage media in report­ing cur­rent events.

In terms of imme­di­acy and impact, as well as a true human face on the events, you need look no fur­ther than:

  • Ultra­brown’s live blog
  • Vinu’s pho­tos on Flickr
  • the rapid and frankly, near-​​overwhelming rate of con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter which is hap­pen­ing at hun­dreds of updates per minute (as at 1300 Thurs­day 27 Novem­ber) from both on the ground wit­nesses and peo­ple engrossed and analysing the events tak­ing place

As my friend, Lau­rel Pap­worth notes:

Twit­ter­ers are all over it. Peo­ple are video­ing in the streets, tak­ing pho­tos, report­ing back to their social net­works. CNN cov­er­age is sim­ply not up to scratch, nor is Aus­tralian TV.

She’s right.

And as you watch the social media land­scape chang­ing, you can see the her­itage media become involved; turn­ing to blog­gers, pho­tog­ra­phers and wit­nesses report­ing via other social tools includ­ing Twit­ter for more imme­di­ate coverage.

At a lower level, the same effect is tak­ing place right now over the protests in Bangkok. The events there are less tense than Mum­bai, so the pace and mood in social media is too. But the imme­di­acy is no less.

As I and oth­ers have noted sev­eral times this year, the false dichotomy of a split between her­itage and new media, between pro­fes­sional and cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists, is no more. News is deliv­ered to the con­sumer through what­ever chan­nel they find most rel­e­vant.

Increas­ingly, that chan­nel is social media well ahead of the her­itage media. The mid-​​afternoon news update is now irrel­e­vant for imme­di­acy, but per­haps not for deep con­tex­tual and sit­u­a­tional analysis.