I have a couple friends in town who were evacuated from New Orleans. After hearing the stories of the levee breaking and flooding the city, I decided to pull up some pictures to get a better sense of the situation. Being a major news event, I'm guessing that there are pictures all over the net, but for some instinctual reason, the first thing I did was tagsurf "katrina" on Flickr. Searching by most interesting, I came across user John Hay's images... incredible.
It wasn't until later that it occurred to me how using Flickr for news represents a significant shift in media consumption. The images on Flickr are raw -- sure, some of them are taken by professional photographers, but most are taken by regular people with digital cameras or camera phones. The images tell first-hand stories of being in a situation without the sensationalism that comes with traditional media channels. Something about it seems more pure and trustworthy.