Eight years later and a lifetime in terms of media coverage. At the time of the event in 2001, cable TV, not Twitter, was the news source of immediacy. Just to give perspective, only 5.4 million homes had DSL connections and only 19.6% of users accessed the Internet at work; the vast majority of Internet users accessed it at home, on dial-up. Even email had not yet hit its tipping point: only 45% of Americans used it for communications in 2001.

In fact, the growth of blogs can be tied directly to 9/11 when the personal testimonies of the participants riveted those who were not in lower Manhattan that day. That was the moment when we began to see the possibilities for this very personal medium.

Today, of course, media is so very different. The news comes at us from all directions with Twitter having emerged as the means to find out what’s going on at this very moment anywhere in the world.

So, imagine if that horrible event was covered by all the media we have today. What would it look like and would the coverage have altered the event?

What would it look like?

Online media: Clearly, everyone would have turned to online media immediately for the details. I can imagine someone tweeting about a low-flying airliner and they may have even been able to catch a picture or video of it. Media would be putting out bulletins immediately and, of course, there would be a move to television coverage much quicker than the word-of-mouth movement most experienced that day. I can remember calling people to tell them to turn on TV. Others were stunned to find out out about it only when they turned it on and those amazing, sickening images replaced the kitschy morning TV shows.

Twitter: Twitter, of course, would be the star of all this and an event like this would likely move even more people to as a source of information. There’s no doubt 9/11 would have crashed Twitter; if Michael Jackson’s death did it, 9/11 might slow the entire system. The switch would then be on to other means of immediate coverage. Facebook, MySpace, texting and Twitter clones would pick up the slack. If Twitter could hold it together, it would become even more essential to the media landscape. If it failed, it might be passed as a media of information during times of extreme stress. I hope Twitter is planning for the potential that this day may happen for its future success may depend on its reliability.

Photos and video: In 2001, the ability to upload photos and videos was very limited which made the Internet less of an interactive experience. Today, these would be passed around at light speed. Media would simply link to the latest images as they came in, no matter where they were housed. YouTube would become a media channel like it has never been. TV coverage would turn to the Internet tools for the latest from those on the scene. iPhone video, Flip cameras and other cell phone video would become essential tellers of the story.

Would it have changed the event?

There’s the big question. My first thought was to find out at what point the planes would have been low enough for someone to text or tweet a message. A quick review of the mountain of information about flight paths shows that the planes dropped down to cell phone level for short periods of time. It is possible that a passenger could have tweeted a message about the hijacking. Would it have been early enough warning to head off the other planes? The first plane, American Airlines Flight 11 was low over the Hudson River for a few minutes. If a passenger had tweeted or texted what was happening, it could have spread information faster than what happened in 2001. Much has been made of the delayed NORAD response and the confuion over where the planes where.

The news media struggled to keep up with the rapid events, as well. CNN did not report a hijacking until 9:18 a.m., more than half an hour after Flight 11 crashed into the north tower. By then, United flight 175 had already hit the south tower in full view of live TV. American 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37 and United 93 crashed at 10:03. That leaves us with less than two hours total for media to get the story together. Online media could potentially have sped up the process and helped people put together the pieces of what they were seeing.

While the media toiled mightily to get the story, its hands were tied by an old system that required calls to sources for perspective and limited the access to witnesses and video. At that time, one of the hardest parts of the reporting job was finding people with pictures, video and eyewitness accounts. They were there, but it took time to find them. Today, that kind of information is everywhere. Someone could have made a connection that could have saved lives.

The advantages of traditional media in these events cannot be underestimated, however. There’s no bandwidth issue - more viewers don’t crash TV stations. But, traditional and online/social have merged into one in many ways so whatever gains the non-traditional have made have an impact on traditional.

It’s all speculation about an event that still gives me pain to remember. Maybe the media of today will help prevent this from repeating and a cloudless blue sky will return to being simply a good day to fly, not something much darker.

Let’s hope.

Tags: 9/11, facebook, hijackings, MySpace, Social Media, twitter

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