The recent Red Line accident on the Washington subway system, the Metro, has me thinking about how I get news these days. Even though I was in the Metro system at the time of the crash and heard announcements about a train with “mechanical difficulties,” I did not realize anything serious had happened until I got home and turned on my computer. There I saw messages from friends on Facebook expressing relief that they had not been in the accident and asking about the status of others who use the subway.

I quickly logged on Twitter, where I found tweets (140-character text messages) from the Washington Post containing links to stories, blogs and photos on its Web site, as well as a video feed from local broadcast station Channel 8. The Washington Post also used Twitter as a means of gathering information, asking anyone who had been in or knew someone in the crash to contact the newspaper and/or send photos. I also received tweets from news organizations outside the Washington area, such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald, as well as messages from individual journalists. I found it exciting to access all this news “in real time.”

About an hour after I got on the computer, my husband arrived home and turned on the television to watch the news of the accident. I joined him, but also continued monitoring my machine. I found it amusing that I often would receive an update via Twitter just as the broadcaster would provide the same information. The next morning, I again logged on to my Twitter and Facebook accounts to get updates on the situation, then listened to the radio during my short drive to the subway.

As Michael and Tanya have asked, should this reliance on sources other than print media cause worry? At no time did I depend on a physical newspaper for news, but I did monitor many different news channels for information. Are all these types of media killing off news organizations, or are they a sign of their adaptation?