Why neither social networking nor SearchMarketingGurus.com are a substitute for news

Over at SearchMarketingGurus.com, Li Evans wrote an article titled
Newsvine Beats Digg To Punch, stating that:

Looks like Newsvine's users beat Digg's users in promoting the tragic mass shooting at Virginia Tech to the front page. It was just about 1 p.m., and I was just finishing up lunch when I decided to take a gander at how the social news sites were handling this story. I decided this was probably pretty popular since MSNBC's servers were taxed and when you could get through they reported no press were allowed into the campus.

To my surprise it was Newsvine that had the story already as the most active out on their front page. Digg, for all its fame around "fast" news, didn't have it on the first two pages. Netscape & Reddit were both minus the story as well at the time of this posting either. Below is [sic] some screen captures.

What the gurus failed to fact-check is that one of NewsVine's differentiators is that it carries a full Associated Press news feed to stimulate social discussion on its site. The front page story is tagged "associated-press" and the graphic is similarly attributed. So what SearchMarketingGurus.com is noting is that the Associated Press, not NewsVine, beat social networking to the news. So recapping the story, the actual score was

Mainstream Media: 1
Social networking sites including Digg.com: 0
SeachMarketingGurus: need to do a little more research.

What I'm most amazed at is that this story is on the front page of Techmeme.com this morning.

Technorati Tags: Associated Press, Mainstream Media, News, Newsvine, Social networking, Reporting