A Community Reporting on Itself

By Eric Richardson
Published: Thursday, June 04, 2009, at 08:32AM

Twittered Fire Photo Eric Richardson [Flickr]

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Tuesday night, a fire broke out in the Arts District, doors down from Urth Caffe and the Barker Block lofts. The blaze destroyed the one-story building before it was extinguished an hour later, but in the process it also acted to illustrate what I see as the power of community news.

The fire was the second time in a week in which we've been able to piece breaking news together in part thanks to the community that follows blogdowntown on twitter.

Last Thursday, a car crashed into the Bank of America at 7th and Figueroa. Ed Fuentes was on scene, but while he was gathering information, much of our first report was pieced together from twitter.

On Tuesday, I was sitting at my computer when I saw the Los Angeles Fire Department report the smoke on Twitter and then upgrade the situation to a "major incident".

After futilely checking my roof to see if I had line of sight to the location, I sent this out on blogdowntown's twitter account:

Fire at 431 S. Hewitt, a few doors down from Urth. Anyone live at Barker Block to give an on-scene report?

Within minutes, Katie Kay of Skin.Graft sent a twitter reply with a photo of the fire:

@blogdowntown eric, barker resident here, but at LAX now-- boyfriend sent this over. Crazy! http://yfrog.com/bhe0kj

I was able to pass that message along to blogdowntown readers, as well as a later report fro LAFD that the fire has been knocked down.

It is a pretty remarkable thought to me that of the more than 1100 of you following blogdowntown on twitter, there's a good chance that one or more of you will see just about anything that happens Downtown. So help us out... Drop us tips... Let's work together to tell Downtown's story.

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Comments

1
keith writes:

yep the plane crash on the hudson river months back a twitter'r posted 1st photo. journalism evolves.

enjoy the downtown blog, thanks for putting it together. there are other blogs but...prefer this one.

# on Jun.04.2009 AT 08:50 AM
2
Rich writes:

And this is the part where we comment on the commentary.

Lame joke aside - thanks for all that you do. You're the one downtown online publication that I look to as a "Must Read"

# on Jun.05.2009 AT 01:49 PM
3
Ravi writes:

This blog makes me feel connected as a Downtowner. As a frequent reader, I go directly to the "Latest Content" instead of the home page. BlogDownTown captures the true essence of the current (MUCH UNLIKE the Oliver Brown series).

I've been a daily reader since 2008. The hook was a when I was looking for items on Little Tokyo and found an image Ed put up regarding a scene from Lou Grant. Yep - that's what did it - can't say why.

# on Jun.09.2009 AT 11:52 AM
4
Ankur writes:

Oh noes, a olive reference! :p

# on Jun.09.2009 AT 12:31 PM
5
LaTanya writes:

So interesting....I saw smoke rising from my east-facing window in the Continental Building. I called security to see what was happening, and put a message on Twitter to see if anyone knew more. By the time the news reported on the fire, I already have tweeted updates from neighbors and friends from LAFD reporting on the fire. Even ABC 7 News didn't have as much information!

I was out of town when the earthquake happened in LA but saw a tweet that said "Local news has nothing but over 10,000 tweets on the earthquake in LA today."

I think this speaks directly to how our neighborhood & community is getting more involved and how it is becoming easier to rely on each other for information.

# on Jun.11.2009 AT 11:28 AM

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