The news started hitting California early Saturday morning with an SMS alarm on my mobile phone - a major earthquake struck Chile, and there was a potential of tsunami activity in California and Hawaii (as well as the rest of the Pacific). First stop - CNN. The news source was right on the story, with real time information flowing into the newsroom from, not on-scene journalists, but through Twitter and Facebook updates.

Another SMS message hits the phone letting me know there was a Twitter list at #hitsunami, and the discussion would include all the most current news related to tsunami preparations in Hawaii. Also gave a link to a web page that was broadcasting a live feed from KHON in Honolulu until the station integrated their feed on the KHON home page.

Back to CNN, cell phone videos began pouring in from Santiago and Concepcion. CNN began broadcasting directly from Chile - not from a CNN journalist, but from a Chilean citizen streaming video through a Skype connection. KHON also began streaming video and audio from a private citizen through BJPENN.COM in Hilo, as KHON also did not have a real time video feed of their own, or a journalist on site that could provide adequate real time information from the city.

For many Americans, the idea of traveling to Hanoi brings a certain level of mystique. Our media exposure to Hanoi has been primarily press corps following politicians such as John McCain, or via the occasional human interest story that pops through via an international cable channel such as Current TV. But for most Americans our memories and images of Hanoi are from the war, whether it is a photo of Jane Fonda gracing an anti-aircraft weapon, or the prisoners of war being released from custody.

Or maybe Vietnam has simply fallen off the charts as an area of interest, while the world focuses on other areas considered more important such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

Citizen journalists may serve an important function in locations such as Hanoi. With an estimated population of nearly 6.3 million, Hanoi is far from a small town, and estimates are the city is growing at about 3.5% a year. The potential of Hanoi, and all other areas within Vietnam as an economic factor within the next decade is daunting, as the government aggressively tries to bring Vietnam into the modern global community.

A couple months ago we explored citizen journalism and how that is changing the way we access news.  From an industry that is largely dependent on advertising revenues to subsidize professional journalists and delivery of news and information, to a communication platform that  that allows anybody with a keyboard and Internet connection to post their interpretation of events to a global audience, the news world has changed.

The players:

Traditional News and Information Sources

The current events in Iran have clearly shown us citizen journalism may bring us news and snapshots of activities denied to traditional reporters.  The CNN "iReport" shows events on the streets of Tehran denied to the professional cameras and interpretation of CNN's seasoned staff.  However, to bring us those iReports, citizen journalists take on risks normally avoided by citizens.   It that risk too high?  The dangers too great?

On June 20^th a citizen journalist  submitted a video showing the brutal death ("Youtube Please don't delete. This is happening in streets of my country World should know.") of a young Iranian woman protester on streets of Tehran.  The motivation for taking the video was to ensure the rest of the world would be exposed to the horrific cost of the demonstrations in the streets, and the struggle would not be suppressed or forgotten.  The individual taking the video clearly put himself in great danger, making a decision the cost of recording this event was too import to be lost to history.

Fox News recently teamed with MySpace to encourage citizen journalists to submit their stories via the "uReport" upload utility.  The Weather Channel asks viewers to submit their videos of hurricanes and tornados, and local stations such as CBS 4 in Denver which made national news when a 6 year old girl uploaded images and video of a tornado cloud forming with a cheap child's toy camera.