London Blogging!

The terror bombings in London gave bloggers around the world an instantaneous snapshot of current events and a moment in history. And by all accounts the bloggers of London held up their part of the bargain quite nicely!

Newsweek on the MSNBC website offers up and inside look at how the Blogging revolution has transformed the gathering and dissemination of news and how the networks and news agencies will have to react to the new face of participatory journalism. Slate also took a look how the Blogging community handled the bloody developments of last Thursday.

It's an interesting examination of our little community and how it reacts in time of crisis and such. The technological revolution that we are all part of certainly has changed things for us, I know that when I first heard of the bombings in London, the first thing I did was to e mail my nephew who teaches school there. Within minutes of my e mail I had received a reply to reassure me that thankfully, all was well with him, though his city seemed a tad un-nerved at the moment. It certainly made me feel a bit better being able to be in contact with him so quickly and seamlessly.

From there I surfed all the usual suspects the BBC and Guardian websites to name couple of faves and then I moved a little further along to some of my favourite blogs. One in particular an Irish blog called Slugger O'Toole, featured a number of first hand reports from readers and contributors who lived in London. It made for a fascinating sense of history as updates were provided through the day.

In the end I did become a spud of the couch though, my clicking finger working out the different combinations to bring me CNN, Newsworld and CTV Newsnet as they all kept up with developments as best they could. I must admit that the newsjunkie in me started to wish I'd broken down long ago and bought that satellite dish, just for the sake of picking up BBC Canada but we made do with the domestic news services for the day.

However, for the sense of immediacy, fear, worry and even hope, the bloggers seemed to have a niche carved out nicely for themselves as well.