Hot Times in the City

A local story, "Blaze Fans Flames of Internet Fame," describes how distributed media represents coverage of a fire in the Hollywood Hills. What is interesting is to see how my hometown newspaper, the recently purchased Los Angeles Times, is jumping on the bandwagon by trying to generate social networking DIY media activities around the phenomena on its photo-sharing site My Scene at its "Hollywood Hills Fire" page. As someone from a fire area in the hills of Pasadena, I well remember getting together with neighbors and watching whatever community conflagration merited being out of bed and shivering in the cold to watch the fire fighters at work. To do so virtually instantiates a new set of social practices.