Jeff Jarvis on the use of Twitter by news organisations to get 'breaking news' information using a citizen journalist type concept...

It's like having a million (or whatever the numbers of Twitterers there are) eyes and ears monitoring the world. At a time of tight budgets it is like having a mass of foreign 'stringers'. Journalists back at a remote location can make a call to physically go to the news or leverage the resources of local citizen journalists with the professional journalist acting as editor.