First-Person Reporting

Posted by Lizz Shepherd May 30, 2008

When I was 15 I was in the middle of a riot in Italy. This wasn't a small group of people- it was a city-wide riot marked by roadblocks, fires and people throwing themselves in front of cars. I wondered whether the whole spectacle would be on the national news back home. But, as my mother pointed out, there were no news crews around. How would anyone find out about it?

That's no longer a problem. Nowadays it's simple for anyone who witnesses news happening to capture it on camera and broadcast it to the world. It's pretty hard for anything newsworthy to go unreported these days. That may be a problem in many cases, but I think that most of the time it's something that we should all be grateful for. If you see news happening, you don't have to relegate it to anecdotes. You can be a part of the international news scene for however brief a time.