Two weeks ago, before US Airways Flight 1549 dipped into a frigid Hudson River, the rare spectacle was already being reported. However, the fate of the 155 onboard was not splashed on the CNN news crawl. No special breaking news bulletin silenced the talking heads on Fox News.

The Charlotte-bound jet was flying beneath the Upper West Side skyline, and New Yorkers, understandably uneasy about low flying planes, did what anyone might do: they dialed 911 then logged onto the Internet.

People like Janis Krums, traveling to New Jersey via ferry, saw the plane skid to a stop on the water and then stared as its passengers gingerly stepped onto the wings. Krums didn’t believe his eyes. He grabbed his cell phone camera and snapped frame after frame of the peculiar scene.

He then posted his images on his Twitter account at 3:36 PM, just moments after the crash. The upload was an afterthought, he has said, but minutes and hours later his pictures were beamed around the globe.

Aside from the millions of social networkers who passed Krums’ images to one another, major news outlets like Drudge Report, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, the Associated Press and countless television networks carried the grainy and unfocused, yet clearly iconic photos of the crash.

The traditional media’s reporting was not far behind Krums and others, but they were behind nonetheless. So, how did Krums, and many others, seemingly usurp the mainstream media that day?

Simple: they were there, and they were ready to report.

While its unfeasible to expect conventional journalists to be everywhere at once, the blogosphere cried victory. But even Krums is hesitant to drink the serum of web hounds that beat their chest every time they thump The New York Times or Politico. A few days after all of the interviews, he reflected on his 15 minutes of fame via his blog.

“I think it is incredible that anyone at any point can have such an impact by simply posting a picture online,” Krums writes. “Anyone with a camera phone can report breaking news. I don’t think that Twittering, Flickering, etc., will replace traditional news coverage. But, it can be a great aid for the traditional media channels.”

Most newsroom leaders would agree, and not just because of plunging corporate news stock holdings amid massive industry-wide layoffs and advertising declines. From big city dailies to your community newspaper and television stations, mainstream media outlets are twittering too. Corporate human resource divisions and police agencies, Southwest airlines, Starbucks, Ford, Rubbermaid, U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama all twitter. Your mom twitters. It’s like that.

Trying to determine whether or not Twitter is some passing fad like Xanga or MySpace or Napster is impossible. For now, it’s here to stay. Twitter and citizen journalism has much to offer, but it has limitations.

The Hudson River incident is a fine example. A closer inspection of the initial Twitter reports that day reveals that details of the incident are sparse. Here are the first eyewitness tweets from someone writing from @manolantern:

1. I just watched a plane crash into the hudson rive in manhattan 12:33 PM Jan 15th from TwitterBerry

2. Really, no joke, a plane just landed in the hudson river, watching it from a building on broadway 12:34 PM Jan 15th from TwitterBerry

Never mind the incorrect timestamp. Manolantern broke the news, but as the updates continue, the writer offers no new details. He doesn’t find out what actually happened or why or how or even if people died. Maybe he can’t or maybe he doesn’t know how.

The writer is a curious bystander who provides his online followers one puzzle piece of a much greater situation. Manolantern doesn’t dig deeper and, in all likelihood, didn’t assume the responsibility of excavating more information. Manolantern is a microblogger with a day job, and he has no obligation to the public.

In the days following the Hudson River crash, Susan Jacobson, an assistant professor at Temple University, who researches the impact of technology and research, was interviewed by CNN about the upswing in citizen journalism and its recent contributions.

“Most people are just sending this information off to their friends,” Jacobson said. “The main thing to take from sites like Twitter and Facebook is that they are informal modes of news dissemination…Young people, I think, have an innate radar about what is legitimate and what is not. They realize that not everything they read and see on the Web is true.”

The burdens of responsible reporting are placed on the shoulders of the mainstream media, who delivered on their duty 15 to 20 minutes after Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia Airport. Here are a few of the initial news alerts from the Associated Press:

1. US Airways plane crashes into Hudson River in New York; boats rescuing passengers.

2. New York City firefighters are responding to a report of an airplane down in the Hudson River.

3. Government official says 2 engines of plane that went down in Hudson disabled by bird strike.

What is striking is how similar in length AP’s updates are to Twitter’s, which limits users to text entries of 140 characters. While the AP accounts lack emotion, they are undoubtedly superior in depth of information. Twitterers don’t disagree. Much of what they post are URL’s to traditional outlets like AP, which has more than 160 years of credibility.

Although AP can never get everything right, readers trust the brand, the reporters, and the photographers who contribute content. The material is always presented under the premise of being as thorough as it can possibly be at that moment. Then, a team of editors edits and fact-checks before being releasing the news to the public.

On the other hand, citizen microbloggers and social networkers have limited credibility, and largely rely on readers and friends to trust their content. Information does not pass through security checkpoints. The words and images come and go as they see fit.

The dichotomy of both news gathering methods is striking, yet they each produce successful journalism worthy of accolades and the world’s attention. Who can forget the Virginia Tech shootings, where cell phone cameras caught the frightening sounds and images of a campus under attack? Do you remember the Indonesian Tsunami videos, or the reports from Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans trying to survive in attics and on rooftops?

The Internet is flooded with cell phone video and photos of crimes, fistfights and political speeches turned political snafu. Technology has afforded the public the ability to see and read anything at any given point. The world no longer waits on television cameras and newspaper reporters for breaking news reports.

The 2006 George Allen “macaca” comment comes to mind. That video ended his political career. Some of it is responsible and some of it isn’t. Citizen journalists have wrongfully reported a number of incidents, most notably last year’s CNN iReport that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a major heart attack. It wasn’t true.

Sifting through the hoaxes and misreporting can be troublesome, especially now that everyone seems to want to be a writer and wants be in the limelight that writing can afford a select few. These bloggers look at Krums and think they can do it or they think about what they can write that might touch a nerve and make the news.

Part of that seems to be making fun of traditional media after they get beat, and it seems to have touched a few nerves.

Matt Marrone of the New York Daily News recently wrote a story under the headline: Twitter Grabs Spotlight With Janis Krums’ US Airways Crash Photo, Then Won’t Shut Up About It.

“Great community building and a fantastic way to share breaking news and information, no doubt,” Marrone writes. “Something to be celebrated and embraced? Absolutely. The death of professional newsgathering? Hardly.”

We’ll see.