Tomorrow (Jan. 14, 2012) marks the one-year anniversary of Tunisia's liberation from 23 years of oppression under dictator Ben Ali. It was a liberation sparked by one man's shocking public protest against injustice through self-immolation and fueled by the power of citizen journalism and social media. During the last months of 2010, Tunisians captured footage of protests and government oppression and shared them with thousands via Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Within weeks, similar protests sprang up in Egypt, Libya and other Arab countries, giving birth to the Arab Spring. With the power of the media now in the hands of every citizen with a smartphone, questions about ethics and accuracy are working their way through the journalism industry -- how do we know what we see on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter is true? Who are the media watchdogs for a form of journalism rooted in unedited immediacy?

"The three evening newscasts have become more different from one another than at any time I can remember," said Bill Wheatley, who worked at NBC News for 30 years and now teaches at Columbia. The differences provide a stark illustration of the state of the news media - much more fragmented than ever, but also arguably more creative.

his may be the year where newspapers finally drop the idea of treating all news as a product, and all readers as customers.

Andy Carvin and Clay Shirky spent an hour on WBUR's "On Point" program Tuesday morning discussing Twitter's impact on media and the world. In one of several insightful exchanges, Carvin explained how Twitter helps him cover the Arab spring uprisings:

As the study describes, Twitter has come to play a crucial role in the way that news functions during events like the Egyptian revolution-like a crowdsourced newswire filled with everything from breaking news to rumor and everything in between, and one that both uses and is used by mainstream media: "The shift from an era of broadcast mass media to one of networked digital media has altered both information flows and the nature of news work … during unplanned or critical world events such as the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, MSM turn to Twitter, both to learn from on-the-ground sources, and to rapidly distribute updates." The evolution of what media theorist Jeff Jarvis and others have called "networked journalism" has made the business of news much more chaotic, since it now consists of thousands of voices instead of just a few prominent ones who happen to have the tools to make themselves heard.

News must be really hard to follow for an everyday consumer of a newspaper website. First tweets go out, sometimes with no links to additional coverage. Then a few grafs go up on a blog, followed by additional updates, either to the top of that post or as new posts. Eventually, a print story gets started, which is posted through an entirely different workflow onto a different-looking story page. This version is usually written as an hourglass-style narrative, following typical print conventions. For the rest of the day, new updates start going to this story rather than the original blog post. Having a hard time following? Here's a graphic to help:

From breaking news curation to new revenue models, many an organization put its best digital foot forward. Social media became more tightly integrated into reporting and overall strategy, while mobile app creation and content optimization were no longer a nice-to-have, but a must. These trends are quickly shaping the young and agile web news industry. As journalists redefine themselves with new tools and skill sets, they're reinvigorating a business that just a few years ago was written off as doomed. Here's a look at six moves with the biggest impact on digital journalism this year.

CNN iReporters were there for the big stories in 2011, from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street.

In 2012, social media-based reporting will continue to reach new heights. We saw it in 2011 with folks like Andy Carvin (@acarvin), Anthony DeRosa (@antderosa) and Matthew Keys (@ProducerMatthew). For coverage of the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement and a myriad of other news events, we turned to the Twitter feeds of these and others to find out the latest. They were, almost without exception, faster than news websites and even the wire services. But 2012 will bring even more opportunities for having a tweet-first, report second mentality. It's radically different from the way that news organizations have traditionally operated, and many discourage the practice

An AP poll of U.S. editors and broadcast news directors ranks the top stories of the year. The list, based on 247 responses, shows the difference between newsroom leaders' editorial judgment and people's reading interests. Four of the stories picked by editors weren't among the top 10 lists of user searches on Google, Yahoo or Bing. Here are the editors' picks for the year's top stories:

A federal judge in Oregon has ruled that a Montana woman sued for defamation was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally during a bankruptcy case, a decision with implications for bloggers around the country. Although media experts said Wednesday that the ruling would have little effect on the definition of journalism, it casts a shadow on those who work in nontraditional media since it highlights the lack of case law that could protect them and the fact that current state shield laws for journalists are not covering recent developments in online media. "My advice to bloggers operating in the state of Oregon is lobby to get your shield law improved so bloggers are covered," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "But do not expect the shield law to provide you a defense in a libel case where you want to rely on an anonymous source for that information."

Twitter is looking back on the most "remarkable" stories that surfaced this year involving a single Tweet and how it affected the lives of its users. The December edition of Stories.twitter.com - which debuted in November and is updated once a month - features a collection of the company's top ten favorite Twitter stories of the year. From a NBA player inviting his Twitter followers to play flag football to the man who live-tweeted the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, here is a look at the site's "Year in Stories" tribute.

Stephen Colbert weighs in on CNN's recent decision to lay off 50 employees - "nobody important, just editors and photojournalists" - by praising CNN's use of iReporters, its name for citizen journalists. "Why buy the cow when you can have it shakily videotape its own milk for free?" Colbert asked. He then has one of his "Me Reporters" run down the day's headlines, which he reads from the front page of a USA Today still in a newspaper box. || Related: CNN's redesigned iReport will look more like a social network than a news site

We've still got another month left of 2011 and already Facebook has supplied a list of the 40 articles shared the most on the site this year. Probing for common themes in these stories might offer marketers some insights into the kinds of messages that Facebook users tend to relay the most: human interest stories prevail over all other topics. And the old journalism school teaching about babies and pets on newspaper covers producing the most sales seems to have a parallel on social media, since articles concerning these two topics seem to get shared more than others.

More and more news sites have been using Storify to capture reaction and highlight interesting discussions taking place on social networks. And journalism educators have also started using it - to create multimedia course content, organize handouts and teach students how to curate social media. The tool, which lets users pull together content from various social networks to tell stories, is a one-stop Web publishing shop for even the most technophobic educator.

The global media market is dominated by roughly nine or ten transnational corporations: General Electric, AT&T/Liberty Media, Disney, Time Warner, Sony, News Corporation, Viacom, Seagram and Bertelsmann. However, with the advent of social media and blogging, the role of the citizen journalist is becoming more valuable than ever. He has the opportunity to present a unique perspective - to breathe fresh air into a society herded by mainstream media.

With little original news reporting surfacing on this Web site, 'perhaps an important lesson learned is that tools don't make a tradesman.'