The news is different now.

If you have not been keeping up, and I count myself in that lagging crowd, social media has added new dimensions to news -- the creation of it, the recording of it and the following of it.

It has been evident in the revolutions sweeping the Arab world.

But nowhere was it more evident than in the coverage of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. If you had the opportunity to follow the event on TV, on Twitter, and on YouTube, you saw a unbelievable disaster unfold before your eyes almost as it happened on the other side of the world, and you could listen to people right in the middle of the event talking about it as they shot videos on their cell phones. You could hear the reaction here from everyday people to celebrities. And you could define the direction of your coverage of the event.

This new interactive relationship with the news and with newsmakers provides a new depth of understanding of a world event.