By now, it seems like everyone is familiar with the fact that while CNN was broadcasting Sarah Palin’s spat with Letterman, something was happening on Twitter last Friday. Over the weekend that followed, Twitter became a key channel of information for what was happening in Iran, as the accusations that the election was stolen grew into massive protests – the largest since the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Twitter was used to funnel information in and out of Iran: to organize Denial of Service attacks on government web sites, to distribute disturbing images of the crackdown, and to organize demonstrations all over the world. And as the New York Times quickly pointed out, “untold thousands used the label “CNNfail” on Twitter to vent their frustrations,” voicing their anger that CNN and other cable news channels were not covering history in the making.

Some construed this as proof that mainstream media has failed because it cannot adapt to citizen journalism and the accelerated news cycles. And of course, Twitter is now being lionized as the future of news by those same people. But this misses the point. Live blogging by the New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Huffington Post, to name a few, provided brilliant US-based commentary and aggregation of information, while the BBC, the Guardian and many other European news outlets were equally thorough and fast with breaking news. These sources fed the Twitter community, and vice-versa. As of mid day on June 16^th, the top most twittered link, according to Twit(url)y, a Twitter URL aggregation tool, was a Boston Globe story featuring Associated Press and Getty Image photos of the protest. Conversely, mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post linked to reports from citizen journalists and Twitter activists such as mousavi1388. Without that exchange of information, the story likely wouldn’t have gotten the legs that it did.

Perhaps this will be the defining moment for Twitter. In many ways it will depend on what happens next in Iran. Technology has played a progressively larger role in enabling the kind of open communication that is the enemy of oppressive regimes. But this does not negate the fact that we need solid reporting to bring out the truth – this should guarantee a role for both professional and citizen journalists – or we will all become poorer for it.