The Citizen Journalist Arrives in Full
R emember the name Mark LaCroix. Lacroix, a guy who lives in Minneapolis, carried CNN and blew away local coverage for the first crucial 20 minutes of today's collapsed bridge story , proving compelling, articulate live accounts after sending about five pictures of the destroyed span -- about what a pro's first dump would be. He even had the presence of mind to send CNN a filer, only a week old, of the intact bridge. CNN's producers didn't think to immediately make use of that image until LaCroix mentioned it in passing to a surprised Wolf Blitzer, who asked on the air that it be broadcast immediately. Because of LaCroix, CNN's coverage was superior to that of their local affiliate, whose on-air anchors were reduced to time-killing babble over the ambiguous video of a fixed-position (likely security) camera somewhere off in the distance, which did not even cleraly show the collapse as well as it did a nearby intact span. LaCroix's work is on the CNN online story...