We are at a crossroads in what journalism really means and how a story is actually transmitted further on. Traditionally, a reporter goes to the scene and reports on what he sees, a journalist writes and comments upon events and then his thoughts are published.

 Recently though, stories are coming from amateurs who happen to be just where the event is happening. Most of their photos taken with various devices, most of them mobile phones, are more telling than one hundred journalists put together.

Amateurs are even more helped by modern microblogging platforms, like Twitter, to report directly from the site.

Recently, a photo showing the U.S. Airways Flight 1549 in New York City sinking and passengers standing on the wings of the plane in knee-deep water has made the news. The picture acquired so much traffic on the Internet that Twitpic was actually shut down for not being able to withstand the massive amounts of traffic it was receiving.

 The picture was made using an iPhone, one of the most popular phones around and most certainly the publicity it is now getting for this picture will benefit Apple. On the other hand, we can’t really only rely on stories reported by amateurs as they don’t have any training and most of the times their “reporting” is very faded.

Even so, the world of journalism has definitely reached a crossroads as more and more stories on the news are backed up by some video filmed by an amateur with a mobile phone.