Twitter citizen journo beat New York packTwitter citizen journo beat New York pack

It was a tweeter who first reported Air Force One flying close to Manhattan earlier this week.

According to Harvard University project, the Nieman Journalism Lab, there was a heap of backchat on social media sites, blogs, message boards and on Twitter.

That back footed the New York news organizations that, however, jumped onto the story as quickly as they could. Unlike Trachtman, they have news web sites.

Nieman quotes New Jersey resident Amy Trachtman, who tweeted away seconds after she heard the aircraft approach NYC.

Trachtman took her dog for a walk, still spooked by her experience, but noticed that the building next door was being evacuated. She used her BlackBerry to tweet again. Then she phoned her friends in Manhattan and went to the news sites to see if there was anything up online.

A reporter at the Advance filed the first online report, but meanwhile the stock market began to get the collywobbles.

The Wall Street Journal go to the story before the New York Times, but the Twitter was the first off the mark. Nieman reckons there's no grand lesson about reporting on the Interweb.

The twitterati were first, but the Harvard project reports there is no great lesson to be learned from this. We think there is.