Ho John Lee’s Weblog

It’s near the end of the day here in California. All day today I’ve been getting regular updates on this morning’s terrorist bombings in London, and aside from general anger at the attackers, and sympathy and concern for the citizens of London, I’m also just realizing that I haven’t had the television on once, nor had the impulse to go check. For me, it has been irrelevant as a news source today.

There is a huge amount of 1st person content - blog postings, photos, audio, and probably video by now. None of it scrubbed for journalistic accuracy, of course, but presenting a collective, subjective view of the situation in a more timely and compelling way than what might otherwise be presented through the conventional media, and providing a vast pool of source material and leads to conventional media journalists. Tonight and tomorrow there will probably be some thoughtful analysis from the news services, but blogging and the internet are a perfect fit for news events in flux.

There have been updates all day on a current events entry on Wikipedia, and a blizzard of entries turning up through Technorati and other blog search engines. Updates from organized news sources are turning up continously on Google News and others.

There’s a good round up posted now at the Wall Street Journal (free section).

I once spent some time in London near the Russell Square station, commuting on the tube every day while I was there. That bit of experience makes the first hand accounts of people there now that much more vivid to me, and the attacks that much more personal.

I think Johnnie Moore’s summary of comments from Andrew Sullivan and Tim Worstall captures a slice of the mood over there.

Sullivan:
Brits regard the best response to outrage to carry on as if nothing has happened. Yes, they will fight back. But first, they will just carry on as normal. Right now, a million kettles are boiling.

Moore:
I’m not drinking tea these days, but I think I’ll boil the kettle anyway.

See also: reader submitted comments to the BBC web site.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 7th, 2005 at 6:38 pm and is filed under General, Travel, Security, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.