[anshul]

Are ordinary "good" citizens capable of really providing such "intelligence" without doing much damage for things about to happen? I doubt it.

However, I really appreciate the sheer lack of original journalism that came from ordinary citizens during this time... I think only one or two people were reporting from ground zero... Pretty much everyone else was just echoing the main media. That is a problem that needs a solution...

A serious collective of amateur journalists doing some serious journalism and not just echoing the established media would be a great thing to have. No idea, how that could be achieved but if it existed during this mayhem, it would have been the resource I would be glued to, not the maddening sensationalist sickening reporting of the news channels.