So a Continental 737 went off the runway at Denver International Airport this evening. The right wing caught fire and the plane was evacuated.
Fortunately no one was killed, although somewhere between 30 and 34 were treated for injuries, with some taken to local hospitals.
There was a brief notice on the bottom of the TV at the local stations, but mostly the network programming wen't on uninterrupted.
The local news has now started interrupting network programming, they are now getting reports from passengers on board.
But for the first hour, the most up to date reporting of the news was on Twitter (hashtag #DIAcrash). It was interesting to watch the story unfold on Twitter. I first saw the news (before it appeared on TV) from someone I was following. A couple of tweets later various links to info started appearing. Once the hashtag appeared, switching to Twitter search consolidated showed several updates per minute. They appear to bring together fragments of information from local news, a police scanner website, etc. What impressed me what how fast the news got onto Twitter and how much information the community came up with.
Now the local news is interviewing a person who was on the plane (by phone) and pictures he took with his iPhone of the plane are appearing.
Clearly how news is getting reported is changing with tools like Twitter, cell phones with cameras, etc. allowing small updates quickly.