By Joe Strupp
Full article: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_con...

NEW YORK Columnists at two major newspapers weighed in Thursday on the impact social media is having on coverage of the Iran post-election protests.

Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times has a piece that contends "The unrest unfolding in Iran is the quintessential 21st-century conflict. On one side are government thugs firing bullets. On the other side are young protesters firing 'tweets.'"

At the Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, Judith Lewis opines that government crackdowns in Iran will not stop the use of Twitter and other technological tools to get the word out:

"Over the last weekend, Twitter was where TehranBureau relayed coordinates for assemblies; it was where trusted users filtered bad information from good. Tweets led to pictures of Mir-Hossein Mousavi mingling in the crowd after the news media reported he was under house arrest, they exposed traps laid by authorities, they linked to a moving video of protesters aiding a fallen policeman whose motorbike had burst into flames -- a priceless record of the complex truths that prevail in a society that so perplexes outsiders."