Webcams as news devices. Webcams are deployed around the world, aimed at subjects from coffee pots to big city streets to locks and dams to porn (look up those links for yourself.) Here is the first that I have seen of a news event, in this case a fire, being captured by webcam and used in the news coverage of the event. The Poynter item has the short lead-in, and the second link shows the image and the story. I have been wondering why it has taken so long for webcam images to be percieved as "information" and not just written off as a silly geeky novelty. Steve Outing's weblog Webcam news photo and story about factory fire.