Its been a few days since the East Coast Earthquake and with no deaths, serious injuries or major property damage reported I’d say its safe for disrespectful discussion.  However, I’m not joking about the actual experience.  No this will be about the coverage of said experience.

I’m sitting in the bedroom, typing away, when everything began to shake.  While I think I’m sitting in one spot there is no doubt that everything else in the room is moving opposite of the house.  Which is also swaying.  Yes, you west coasters go through this every morning.  Its scary for an area that isn’t used to this sort of activity.  Its the third earthquake I’ve experienced in my life and by far the biggest.  Once I knew I was safe, my fiance was as well, and there were no fires or danger of the house collapsing I wanted some news.  Instant breaking multi million dollar coverage of this event.

Long time readers will remember that we got rid of cable months ago to save money.  Between Hulu and Netflix and damn near every network and channel having their shows available to watch within a day or week online, we haven’t missed cable.  When it was announced hours ahead of time that President Obama was going to tell the world Osama Bin Laden had been killed I watched it online.  Forgetting what site it was, as soon as I signed online there was nothing but links to sites airing the speech.  Thus I assumed it was always this easy.  This was foolish of me.

Back to this week, lets see who has earthquake news for me to watch online.  CNN, no video links.  MSNBC, not even an article. Only a breaking news bar stating that there had been an earthquake.  FOX News, nothing.  The networks had nothing, nor any cable channel that might possibly have a news division.  I even tried local news hoping to catch onto something.  This is where I reached an angry level of frustration.  The local news says, “central NY feels alleged earthquake.  May be connected to Virginia quake.”  May be?  Allegedly?  You mean the entire east coast shakes at the same exact time as a massive earthquake in Virginia, and we need to throw out words like allegedly?  Are reporters worried that the earthquake might sue for libel?

In the end I had to turn to, of all things, Justin.TV for any sort of news.  For those of you who may not know, here’s how Justin.TV works.  Someone turns something on on their TV.  They then take a webcam of some sort and point it at the TV, thus streaming whatever is on the TV.  Its a good way to illegally stream PPV boxing, wrestling and MMA.  What I never realized before is that there is always at least one “channel” on the site that is playing every news channel that exists.  I found CNN and over a few hours of watching it never once crashed, skipped, or in any other way messed up.

My question is this, why are these channels taking so long to embrace the digital age?  I realize that the news business is a business and people have to make money.  Great, play the commercials as well.  The same ones that play during the on air channel can play on a website.  With smart phones, tablets, lap tops, and the many other ways that people are watching media now, why wouldn’t every channel have an online way to watch their content?

The longer it takes me to have to find content, the more likely it is I wont be watching it.  Then I’ll stay on the places that are on that cutting edge.  Providing me with information at the moment I want it.  Now.  Twitter and Facebook showed how invaluable they are in moments like this.  Before the shock waves had reached New York, there were already hundreds of Tweets from Virginia about the quake.  While every news site has only one sentence “5.8 earthquake hits Virginia” and nothing else, social media has hundreds if not thousands of informative posts (and yes many not so informative).

All of this happens again with Hurricane Irene.

While Twitter and Facebook are Barry Allen fast neither is as fast as video, light.  Streaming video of the news, live video, would reach my eyes and ears faster than the infinite monkeys at the infinite keyboards.  News organizations, step up and integrate or don’t question why you were left behind by this current generation.