A student, trapped in a building during the shootings at Virginia Tech University, text-messages her mother and brother while hiding under a desk.

A posting by "Paul" on LiveJournal.com of his girlfriend's ordeal becomes one of the first detailed accounts to flash around the world.

And, in the most compelling image of all, a student's cell phone video camera captures gunshots on an eerily empty campus.

Perhaps more than any recent news event, Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech marks the moment when digital media really came into its own, with bloggers and texters and cell phone users playing a highly visible role in the early news gathering process.

And judging by the tributes, photos and first-person accounts piling up on Flickr.com, Facebook.com, Legacy.com and other Internet sites, they will continue to do so as this story spins out -- and beyond.

"We're seeing a benchmark moment for digital media, no doubt," said Bob Steele, Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute, a media think tank in Florida.

While noting that the mainstream news media -- television, radio and newspapers -- "has covered this story with intensity and on all cylinders," he said widely available technology and the campus's isolation meant that digital accounts provided critical information during the first hours of the crisis.

"If this story had played out in Boston, New York, Los Angeles or Pittsburgh, news organizations would have been on top of the story almost immediately," he added. "The fact Blacksburg is at least a bit away from larger cities and metropolitan areas made this a story in many ways told through eyewitnesses rather than from journalists."

Yesterday, the digital outpouring became a deluge, with condolences and expressions of grief posted on numerous online social networking sites and blogs. On Facebook.com, 338 groups were listed last evening offering their prayers and their poems, while many MySpace.com users changed their profile photo to the "VT" logo backed by a black ribbon.

The first digital impressions began trickling onto Internet chat boards early Monday morning and picked up momentum shortly after 11 a.m. when CNN ran Jamal Albarghouti's shaky, stunning video -- from his cell phone -- on its news channel and on its Web site. It showed an empty campus, with shots ringing out, over and over again, and distant images of police charging Norris Hall.

MSNBC.com had its own riveting transcript of text messages from Laura Anne Spaventa, a 20-year old Virginia Tech student, who, as "blueiyed," communicated with her brother, "chiknman," while she hid under a desk in a classroom:

"blueiyed (11:04:25 AM): 5-6 gunshots outside my building = - O

chiknman (11:03:13 AM): right now - shooting?

blueiyed (11:06:13 AM): like 5 mins ago"

Some members of the "old media" who happened to be well-versed in "new media" went to work as soon as early reports began surfacing about the shootings.

Robin Hamman, a senior BBC journalist and head of that news organization's blogging department in London, started scrolling through Technorati.com, which searches blogs, and del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site, for any postings from Virginia Tech students.

It took a bit of doing, but on LiveJournal.com, a free blog site, he found "Paul," whose girlfriend had been injured in the shooting. In his posting, "Paul" described horrific scenes and "Kate's" bravery, and how she and another student had pushed desks against the door to keep the shooter -- identified yesterday as Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year old English major from South Korea -- out of the room. He also described how a German teacher had tried to block the door and was killed.

"When I read that post," said Mr. Hamman, "I realized I had managed to find or stumble into something that was really powerful."

The BBC included the posting in its on-air reporting, and it also appeared later on ABC and MTV.com.

When Mr. Hamman returned to LiveJournal.com several hours later he found numerous media representatives had posted to the site, begging "Paul" to contact them.

In what media blogger Jeff Jarvis calls the "new architecture of news" in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, there is this question: Who gets to own the story? The professional journalist from a traditional media organization, or the "citizen journalist" posting on YouTube.com and elsewhere?

Mr. Steele adamantly believes the answer is the former, not the latter.

"CNN used [the cell phone video] as part of its story, but to call [Mr. Albarghouti] a citizen journalist is a misnomer and a mistake," he said, noting that journalists have used witness accounts in their stories for decades, even centuries.

But the news media rely on these observers as "citizen journalists" at their peril, he added, noting that they might "turn the camera on and off to protect friends and they may in some cases only provide certain pieces of information."

"I'm just waiting for the hoax video now," he said.

Mitch Gelman, senior vice president and executive producer at CNN.com, has a different view of what he calls "participant observers."

While noting that various forms of media have achieved dominance over the past century or so -- from newspaper coverage of World War I to the Life and Time photo essayists of the Korean War to cable television coverage of the Persian Gulf war -- the past year has been a watershed for the cell phone journalist and the blogger.

Three events have heavily relied on the average person's input, he noted: the bombing of London's underground subway system, the attempted military coup in Thailand, which shut down most traditional media, and Monday's shootings in Virginia.

"Different people are going to use different phrases, but at the end of the day, there are so many ways to tell stories," Mr. Gelman said.

"There is a place for traditional journalism and for participant observers, and if you can combine those two, you have done an exceptional job in telling a complete story."