Has Social Media Broken The News Model?

Depends on who you listen to.
This guy thinks it's a deeply flawed concept, and in the Ft. Hood massacre case he cites as proof, he's clearly right. (As further proof, I could point to Mayhill Fowler's wretched coverage of the presidential campaign during Huffpo's little Off The Bus experiment — Jay Rosen, I'm looking at you — but I won't, heh).
But he goes on to argue that the Tweeting out of Iran clearly made no difference since the same hierarchy is still in power, an argument that just shows to go ya that any good idea taken to its logical conclusion is just bullshit. Not to mention that even a good social critic can fall prey to the current fast-food concept of history.
Nothing is proven about Iran yet, including the influence of social media reporting. And it's my guess that scholars will still be debating it 50 years from now, if we last that long.
By that I mean, if we last past 2012.

ADDENDUM: Here's a little insider recap of the Fowler reference above. It should be noted that the writer did not mention that Fowler was at the aforesaid fundraiser because she was given a ticket as a private citizen and she used her camera phone to record Obama in violation of the rules for attendees. It's called ambush journalism OR sneak journalism where I come from and it's patently unfair. Should we be secretly recording candidates in the bathroom? At their parents' anniversary parties? They were private remarks at a private function and Fowler violated the rules to get what soon became the "Bittergate" story. Certainly not the first reporter to ever do so.

And Fowler broke a "big" story, Obama saying that Pennsylvania voters might be bitter and cling to God and guns as recourse. The context was entirely misused by the Republicans and the  media and still pops up occasionally, while Huffpo pats itself on the back for a job well done. Sigh.