Every Dot Connects

One of the friends I’ve made online this year is Jim Long, a cameraman for NBC news, who is usually on the White House detail. (By day, that is. After hours he morphs into a superhero named Micro Media Mogul. Or so I’ve heard.)

Right now Jim is covering the horrific story of the massacre at Virginia Tech, and in the crazy way that new media is merging with network news, I’ve been following Jim’s behind-the-scenes reports today. In fact, it turns out that Jim actually learned about the breaking story from me, when I Twittered about it this morning. Shortly after that, he got the call from 30 Rock to load up and head to Virginia.

I already knew that Jim was a great storyteller with his camera. Turns out he can capture a story in words too — in fact, in very short bursts of words sent from his cell phone. Reading his numerous “tweets” today, I was caught up in the dash to get to the studio and load the gear. Jim described seeing other news crews traveling the same highway in the mad rush to get to the scene.

And then this message really drove the significance of the story home:

Then there was this:

And finally, everything was in place, and after sending these two short messages, Jim put eye to lens and brought the story into our living rooms.

A few minutes ago Jim messaged that the “adrenaline is waning” and wondered if anyone had booked a hotel room for the crew. These short messages — some mundane, some eloquent — provided a personal perspective on the news that I found fascinating.

Twitter has a lot of critics who dismiss it as something frivolous, but today was just one more demonstration that it has a legitimate business purpose.

Just before I pressed “Publish,” I saw another tweet from Jim cross the ‘Net:

Get some rest, Jim. And thanks for the micro-reporting today.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.