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, and sourcing from forums, Twitter, blogs, and Flickr.

Quickest off the draw was Stephen Nunes, who posted a tweet complete with link to the U.S. Geological Survey (journalistic quandary: to twitter immediately without verification, or to get the facts?)

Meanwhile, Mitchell Jones was also twittering – about his scrambling for information about the earthquake.

Once he’d gathered some facts, he blogged it. In addition to the official sources and other news outlets, Mitch had also gathered some original material from blogs and blog comments.

(And the Flickr-sourced image of a bleary-eyed housemate in dressing gown watching the news was an unusual one, but in the absence of the old lump-of-debris snap it kinda works for me as a representation of what was happening across the country – and he gets credit for thinking visually).

Cleverly, he’s obviously set up Twitterfeed to post blog updates to his Twitter account too.

Within two hours the story had gone live on the Environmental News Online website, complete with tags.

Congratulations, Mitchell, on a job well done.

PHP Freelancer