Felix Salmon complains that the “social media tail” was wagging the mainstream media dog during the week of the Boston Marathon bombing manhunt:

The Boston bombing and subsequent manhunt was in many ways the first big interactive news story. It wasn’t the first big event to be covered obsessively on social media, but it was the first big event where millions of people became part of the story themselves. Some did so through choice, combing through photographs on Reddit or 4chan; others simply happened to be in Boston and saw their public lives, as broadcast to the world on social media, become part of the story just by dint of where they were.
The result was a veritable deluge of streams, in a world where the news has become a hard-to-navigate rapids at the best of times. . . .

Bloggers and social media users are not likely to agree with Salmon’s “leave it to the professionals” attitude:

There’s an art to working out where to find fast and reliable information, and to judging new information in light of old information, and to judging old information in light of new information. And there’s an art to synthesizing everything you know, from hundreds of different sources, into a single coherent narrative. It’s not easy, it’s not a skill that most people have, and it’s precisely where news organizations add value.

Knowing what’s true or false is “not a skill that most people have”? This is apparently why you need professionals like Felix Salmon to tell you what to think. Of course, if you want to tell Felix Salmon what you think (and there’s an art to that) his Twitter handle is @felixsalmon.