Weather Today: 80 degrees and Smoky...

NASA's Terra satellite at 5:30 p.m. EDT

Friday...Mostly sunny. Areas of smoke. Highs 84 to 89. Light winds.
Friday Night...Mostly clear. Areas of smoke in the evening. Lows 53 to 61. Light winds.

As the week comes to an end, there is a somber feeling around town. The devastation that has taken place across Southern California is almost unbelievable. Surreal, is the word I hear often right now. Surreal, is what it was, flying over Southern California on Sunday night, October 21st, when there were only 2 fires, Malibu and Irvine.
As I moved through the week, glued to the TV while in the house, listening to talk radio in the car; I also found myself visiting sites like flickr and NASA to see the latest images, following KPBS on Twitter, receiving emergency alerts from Pepperdine University on my cell phone, and reading tons of blog entries documenting every minute of the day. As we know, times have changed and the way we receive information has also changed. It was evident after 911, more evident after Hurricane Katrina, and now this. Even news stations were getting information from blogs and referencing them. Newscasters were asking people to submit their photos online, imagine what that does to photojournalists? Google has even created maps pinpointing all the fire areas.

On these pages, I hope to have conversations about how managing mass media has changed, for better or worse.