Here at Bangkok Metblogs, we were pretty quick to start writing about the Coup, what was happening, and the effects on the people of Thailand. We were also quick to head down to the streets to get firsthand accounts and pictures of what was going on

I myself noticed how few traditional news networks were a the scene at 11pm on the 19th, and it seemed that the news reports that were being delivered were being done by people in news studio’s and not ones physically there.
Blogging has changed the way the public now receives information. Gone are the days of waiting for the big guns (CNN/BBC/Reuters) arriving at the scene to give the report, now local residents take it upon themselves to write up what’s happening and post it on their blogs. In recent events it’s these personal accounts that lead to the news agencies referencing.

The London bombings on 7/7 saw the first initial reports coming from local bloggers who lived near to the blasts. In India, local bloggers were the first to react to the terrorist attack on the Mumbai train attacks and the public found these blogs more up to date with information than local TV channels.

This blog received a large amount of traffic during the first hours of the coup and we also had our reports and images used by various other news websites since.

– Globo.com in Brazil used two images and details of what was happening on their news site (thanks to Luciana Mastrorosa)
– BlogTV included our site and images in a report on the coup. (If anyone would mind translating it that would be great)

The future of journalism has changed and it will be interesting to see how the mainstream media accept bloggers as a source of news rather than a passing fad