A small plane and a tourist helicopter collided over the Hudson River in lower Manhattan today. Though Twitter played a big role like it often does with breaking news coverage, this time some of the best coverage of the breaking event was from the source itself: the Fire Department.

The FDNY has a live video stream and coverage of the rescue efforts that allowed those who tuned in to listen and watch updates from the air and comment real-time in a “shoutbox.” Sure the New York Times and Fox News were updating their breaking stories  on their websites, however, the traditional news reports often lagged behind. Why? They were relying on the facts from the source, who itself was reporting on their live video feed, garnering more than 300 viewers.

As a journalist, I have to ask myself, is this a trend that is going to continue in the future and will it replace the role of journalists? I think not, mostly because professional reporters are trained to get the details and provide it in a coherent way, which was often lost in the jargon of the FDNY feed.

Also, I will add that the NYTimes and other news sources offered much more context in their stories and eventually included a video and photos of the rescue scene. But this live feed is a good example of how sources are playing a role in reporting themselves, and most of the time they have much more access than reporters do:

Kudos to Joey Baker for pointing this out via Twitter.

Maybe I have just learned to ignore the depressing news of the thousands of layoffs at newspapers and other news organizations across the nation and begun to pay more attention to the bright spots in journalism. There are journalism jobs being created what seems like every day.

The advice I have given to myself constantly, and will offer it to anyone that loves storytelling: If you truly want to be a journalist, you will find a way. But if you are one of those reporters or editors dwelling on the “glory days” of newspapers and keep a constant eye on sites like the Newspaper Death Watch or the Journalism is Dead site from Mark Luckie and is a collection of funny quotes on why journalism is dead, then someone needs to scream in your ear and tell you that things have changed. They are going to keep changing. But I am simply more optimistic (and can afford to be – I know things change when you have a mortgage and kids to feed, etc.).  Here are a few reasons why I am optimistic:

With a slump of 5 percent in online advertising in the first quarter in comparison to last year’s numbers, news sites seem to be trying new forms on the Web to increase revenue. One of the things I have noticed is more sites incorporating in-text ads that appear as links and expand when a reader hovers over them. But does this form of advertising ruin the reader’s experience? Moreover, does it cross ethical boundaries?

There was a lot of fuss about Compete.com’s numbers on Twitter.com visits slowing, as reported by Mashable. I decided to use Compete.com to check on some of the local news sites and see how they are doing. If the site’s stats are accurate, it means that StarTribune.com’s unique and overall visits have been slipping since January. The overall visits have also been declining from 5.5 million in March to 4.6 million in May.