When Michael Jackson passed away in June 25 2009 last year, one of the surprising things was the fact that it was not the mainstream news like the Washington Post or the NY Times who reported it first; but rather it was a celebrity gossip website, TMZ who published the news first.
The news was quickly adopted by Twitter users who then retweeted the news on to the world. From this, we can see the speed at which news can quickly travel across the world in mere minutes.