"Are a bunch of Internet "vigilantes" behaving more responsibly than professional journalists in the hunt for the Boston bombers?"

"Fox News, ABC and CNN reported Wednesday afternoon that an arrest had been made in the Boston Bombing case. It turned out not to be true. Here is a collection of some of the bulletins from Twitter."

"In a breaking news situation, journalists get an adrenaline rush. There is a palpable eagerness to get the scoop, to be the first to bring the story to the public. In today's world of social media, mobile phones, and the real-time 24/7 news cycle, though, journalists face competition from all sides: eyewitness accounts, official sources, and even friends and family are sharing news before mainstream news institutions have "published" the official news story. To illustrate this predicament, I compiled 26 tweets that "broke" the Boston Marathon bombing news."

"While much industry attention of today's era of new-media companies is focused on the likes of BuzzFeed, Vox Media, NowThisNews, The Atlantic's Quartz, The Magazine, and PandoDaily, one publication with a decidedly old-school approach to news is finding success with what is increasingly looking like an old-school medium. the SCOTUSblog drills down deep into one issue, the Supreme Court of the United States, and in an old-fashioned reverse-chronological weblog format."

""We are in the second phase of disruption, and I think this job is a great place to think about and participate in some of the ways we go forward," he said. "I think the great digital journalism of our age has yet to be created. The cohort that is at Columbia now is the one that will be making the journalism that is going to shape our democracy: working on mining data sets, creating video that is not 2012, coming up with much more powerful ways of accruing and displaying information.""

"In 2012, a continued erosion of news reporting resources converged with growing opportunities for those in politics, government agencies, companies and others to take their messages directly to the public."

"Will this experiment in free-market journalism work, and no matter the outcome, what does it say about the future of the trade? Sullivan, in many ways, is sui generis. He was one of the first mainstream journalists to start blogging, back in 2000, and he has built a large and loyal following-a real community of people who share his interests (everything from politics to poetry), and his take on those interests. The question is whether that's enough to support a business that currently employs seven people. As Sullivan put it, "We have almost no precedents for where we want to go." "

"Twitter is celebrating its 7th birthday with a video showing a short history of the service, from its humble beginnings and co-founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet, to the present day, when it boasts 200 million users."

"Here's a run-down of the finalists of the Shorty Award for #Journalist, presented with Muck Rack. These finalists have done an exceptional job using social media to share breaking news and provide real-time answers to real-world questions, while speaking in a relevant and honest voice."

"A social media newsroom, the teams of reporters at Storyful monitor and engage with communities on Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and any social media platform on which anyone with an Internet connection can converse. ((Within two years of launching, Storyful began cooperating with some of the biggest news brands in the world, including ABC News, Reuters and the New York Times, and social platforms such as YouTube.(( Sheridan recently spoke with the European Journalism Centre, where this interview originally appeared, about his vision for digital-first journalism and what role outfits like his will play in enabling it."

"Andy Carvin's official title is Senior Strategist, Social Media Desk at NPR, but that bureaucratic fog undercuts the scale of his work. More emphatically, The Columbia Journalism Review has called him a "living, breathing real-time verification system," while The Washington Post declared him "a one-man Twitter news bureau." The Guardian described him as "the man who tweets revolutions," while The Daily Dot labeled him "Edward R. Murrow 2.0," referencing the World War II-era radio broadcaster often cited as one of journalism's most inspiring figures. Whatever @acarvin's doing, it has many observers reaching for superlatives."

The graph search friends-based search engine Facebook announced Tuesday can be a valuable source for valuable sources for journalists, and for photos, as well, Journalist Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik wrote in a note on the Facebook + Journalists page.

"After six years of affiliating his popular blog with major media companies Time, The Atlantic and most recently the Daily Beast, Andrew Sullivan announced he's returning to independence. As of Feb. 1, the blog will live at andrewsullivan.com without any ads, sponsors or investment backing. Just Sullivan and a couple of colleagues blogging - and hopefully, readers paying. Sullivan is asking for $19.99 a year to subscribe ("around a nickel a day"). Sullivan calls it "the purest, simplest model for online journalism: you, us, and a meter. Period. No corporate ownership, no advertising demands, no pressure for pageviews … just a concept designed to make your reading experience as good as possible, and to lead us not into temptation." The metered model, to be administered by TinyPass, allows a yet-unspecified number of free reads per month, with exemptions for any visitor following a link from another blog. "No blogger or writer need ever worry that a link to us will push their readers into a paywall," Sullivan writes. He hopes this will pave the way for other writers:"

"Here are five predictions for how digital media will unfold in 2013:"

"Snow Fall tells the story of skiers and snowboarders trapped beneath an avalanche in Washington state's Cascade Mountains. And it tells that story through text, photos, videos and interactive graphics that blend seamlessly and come alive on the Web page" You can see the difference clearly in this side-by-side comparison. The left side shows how multimedia is segregated in a typical New York Times article (the Sunday Magazine profile of Jerry Seinfeld), and on the right side is the first page of the Snow Fall project.

"Pushing to the future of journalism - A project of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard"

"He discusses the app and his take on the future of journalism and the importance of local, unique stories in the survival of journalism. It's a short but insightful clip"

"It's not exactly a newsflash that the newspaper industry has seen better days. But I still found these charts, which I came across in Business Insider's expansive presentation on the future of digital media, striking:"

"Symbolia is a digital magazine whose content is more storyboard than story - a rich blend of illustrations, comics and audio clips that spin a different kind of narrative." When I say "illustrated journalism," I don't just mean pretty pictures with the news. We're talking about integrating long-form, investigative pieces with comics, infographics and other interactive elements to create a very visual news experience unlike anything that's really been tried before. We are basically turning the news into art.