It's not just powerful media conglomerates deciding, all of a sudden, that this should be a huge news story. If anything, TV and newspapers have lost power over the last decade. The traditional media is taking a cue from what's trending among social networks and the blogosphere, to whom they're losing ground.

I think that in 2014, we're seeing people, by way of Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc., doing what traditional media failed to do 10 years ago. In many ways, twitter is faster, more democratic, and more viral than old-school outlets. We saw this in the wake of the Boston bombings, when CNN journalists were embarrassingly out-reported by social media users on the ground.

Black twitter, for one, has found a way to FORCE issues into the spotlight, bypassing the gatekeepers and changing the traditional channels of journalism. For millions of people, Bill Cosby became a rapist by way of hashtags before he became one in the New York Times.