Now I know the answer, thanks to Twitter: Yes, they would.

Less than two hours ago, A US Airways jet made a water landing on New York's Hudson River, shortly after departing from La Guardia Airport. I found out about it via a Wall Street Journal e-mail alert that was sent out at 3:52 in the afternoon, about 25 minutes after it happened, and immediately checked my regular breaking news sources. Nothing on Google News. CNN.com had a brief story that repeated the details of the WSJ alert, and a grainy screen capture from a local television news report, showing a partially submerged plane surrounded by boats. I followed the link through to but there was no live video or even an older video report.

But this is where it gets interesting.

My colleague in San Francisco IMed me a Flickr link. It was a mirror of a picture that had been posted to Twitter by someone on a passing ferry, and it told a story than the professional news organizations had thus far missed:

People had survived the crash. Scores were standing on the wing, or exiting one of the front doors into a gray rubber life raft, or the inflatable escape slide. I counted 34 on the wing, and 11 on the boat/slide. At least three of them were wearing what appeared to be the yellow life jackets stowed under the seats -- the ones in the safety demonstrations that require passengers to connect straps and pull down a red tab or blow into a tube to inflate.