Over the last few years I seem to have stopped watching the TV news, listening to the radio news, nor do read newspapers.

I don’t tend to have a daily dose of news. I’ve done this on purpose, it’s mostly negative and dreary, and there’s little that actually really effects my day to day life.

I don’t even read any news websites regularly (despite managing the build of one the major ones a few years ago). I figure if it’s important news I’ll find out from a real person.

What is seeming to happen though, is I now find out news from Facebook and Twitter. The Social Media networks are excellent real time distributors of news. News often spreads via these networks before it reaches the main media.

Tonight’s example is the Earthquake in Samoa, and the subsequent threats of Tsunamis (what is the plural of Tsunami?) hitting Pacific shores. I saw an RT (retweet) about it, and thought “is this a news event I need to know about?”. A quick Google News search for Tsunami returned several thousand current articles, a hot topic indeed.

So, is Social Media the new News? Is this where we’ll get our news from in the future? Will traditional media change to become more and more current? Everyone predicts the death of newspapers, it’s yesterdays news.

But hell, it doesn’t matter if you drop a newspaper in the bath. iPhone’s aren’t quite so waterproof.