In the past few days, numerous news outlets have discussed the changing ways the news media covers tragedies, specifically shifting from mostly their own coverage and investigations to using a huge amount of contributed content from people on the scene. Here's a round-up of some of those articles and opinion pieces, as well as a few pieces on how fabulous the student newspaper and the Roanoke Times have covered the events.

From this morning's Washington Post article headlined "Students Make Connections at a Time Of Total Disconnect":

When Jamal Albarghouti first heard the gunshots, he ran toward them.

Then he took out his cellphone.

Albarghouti, a graduate student at Virginia Tech, is "the cellphone guy" -- a 24-year-old who used the camera in his sleek, silver Nokia N70 smartphone to capture video of police rushing toward Norris Hall, the building where the shots rang out.

This is what this YouTube-Facebook-instant messaging generation does. Witness. Record. Share.

Yesterday on the Digital Edge, we posted a few quick links to interesting user-generated and student coverage of the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus. Today, newspapers and blogs are looking at how covering these kind of tragic events has changed in the past few years.

Here are a few additional links to interesting articles/posts about the role technology played in on-the-scene coverage:

Reporting from the Scene, Witnesses Act as Journalists (Chicago Tribune): "The most arresting coverage from Virginia Tech came from citizen journalists who went to work well before the media could grasp the massacre's full scope."

Journalists Look to Bloggers for Virginia Tech Story (CNet): "When tragedies like the school massacre occur, the news media are increasingly turning to bloggers for first-hand information."

Virginia Tech Citizen Reporting (BuzzMachine): "Note also that students in a media class in the school immediately took to the phones and email to try to find out facts and get them up for fellow students on their site, PlanetBlacksburg.com." (Note: PlanetBlacksburg.com was down yesterday, but coverage from the online news publication was running on The Collegiate Times Web site. PlanetBlacksburg.com was back online by this morning.)

Citizen Journalists Help Tell the Virginia Tech Story (Follow the Media): “Watching the tragedy at Virginia Tech unfurl via CNNI has brought home how important civilian journalists have become to the telling of breaking news on television.”

Again, it's very worth checking out Roanoke.com, which has set up a guest book and posted an interactive map, video, audio, forums and more -- and the newspaper is also continuing breaking news coverage. The capable team there really stepped up and provided a good example for other newspapers who may have to cover a similar event -- though we certainly hope that will never, ever happen.

Update April 18: Editor & Publisher has a good piece interviewing the editor of the Virginia Tech stuent newspaper, the Collegiate Times. "The student publication has already garnered accolades for jumping on the story early with what appears to be the first online report of shots fired at a campus dormitory, Web updates that have rivaled major market dailies, and the first list early Tuesday naming many of the dead victims -- still linked at The New York Times' site," Editor & Publisher reported. There's another story on the fabulous Collegiate Times coverage on NPR.

And last night, the Center for Citizen Media Web site published an op-ed (scheduled to run in the Washington Examiner today) about how events like these may give us a glimpse into our digital media news future. Dan Gillmore wrote, "We used to say that journalists write the first draft of history. Not so, not any longer. The people on the ground at these events write the first draft. This is not a worrisome change, not if we are appropriately skeptical and to find sources we trust. We will need to retool media literacy for the new age, too."

Also yesterday, Steve Fox questioned whether the now famous (or "infamous," he wrote) cell phone video with gunfire sounds is really journalism. "Consider this: the video had no inherent news value and told no story. It did have sounds of bullets being fired and screams. Those were bullets that killed, maimed and injured students and faculty members. This wasn’t a video game. Is such video responsible journalism? Are these the types of Citizen Journalists that people want to see? Are we doomed to create “citizen journalists” to play the I-patsies for cable television?" Fox wrote on NewAssignment.net.