We’ve witnessed two very dramatic incidents in the last two days in the news in Miami and Chicago. Apart from the fact both incidents involve planes, what else do the events have in common? Here are the clues:
- USA Today On The Miami Airport ‘Bomb’ Drama:
- "It was quite scary," Gardner told WTVJ-TV in Miami. "They wouldn’t let you move."
- BBC News On The Chicago Plane Skid:
- "It got really bumpy, and then a big crashing sound," passenger Katie Duda told local TV station WMAQ.
National news getting their news from local news.
Since the invention of ‘news’, someone else’s local news has been old news by the time it reached you - even in this age of the web. So for one moment, imagine that we had access to all the local content from local TV and radio stations (and blogs) through technology like RSS, and this content was organised in some way like del-cio.us-style tagging, Technorati-style weighting and the way Wired’s Chris Anderson reads the press - not through news editors but filtered by the blogosphere.
Why would we need news networks then?
Hmmm. I wonder what would happen if someone ever tried to put together such a thing - say, like Craig Newmark in his new venture. That would kill news gathering in the same way as, say, Craigslist killed classifieds, no?
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I don’t think that is necessarily true…. a lot of local newspapers also feature stories from national papers. similarly, college papers feature stories from local and national papers. This has been going on for long!
It would be humanly impossible to stay abreast of news and happenings everywhere- even with internet availability and access to all local papers/news stations etc. Which is where news networks play a major role. they are simply distilling the information and bringing it to us.
just like blogs do.
December 9th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
Thanks Jinal. My point is that the news gathering and reporting - which is a huge chunk of what papers do - will be replaced by technical methods that will get the news sent directly to us. We won’t need to monitor everything - the Folksonomy will do it instead.
December 13th, 2005 at 1:46 am
Robert Niles dropped me a line to say:
“You’re right The question remains how will information from the grassroots be collected and distributed without MSM reporters doing that work? There’s a solution out there (http://www.ojr.org/ojr/robert/884/) , but it is not yet clear.”
December 13th, 2005 at 5:25 pm
I find that one really difficult!
Who is the Editor? Who does the Filtering? The user? I mean, how much time do you need to skip through all European Newspapers, all US newspapers, all NY State Newspapers? How much time does it even take to create your profile then, which papers or newsfeeds you prefer? Seems very complicated to me.
And then still- I like my regular newspaper. It takes years to find out which newspapers you regularly read etc.. and probably you gonna change your daily newspaper 3,4 orso times in your life.
Therefore I think you’d need some kindof trusted Editorial-Service in the Web that pre-selects all the information-feeds you need for your personal use. I personally don’t see a convincing service offering that YET.
What do you think?
greez,
matthias
December 14th, 2005 at 9:40 am
Mattias,
I don’t think you’re thinking big enough. Stop thinking ‘my, that would be a lot of information to get through’ - you’re going to get the same level of content - how it gets edited/sorted will change. This will be done through a new system created through the folksonomy.
The only thing the newspapers will keep will be opinion and original reporting - say 20% of their business.
December 14th, 2005 at 11:30 am
Piers,
heh! I try to think really big but I don’t get the picture on how to sort all this 10.000.000 newsagencyfeeds out there and sync them in one easy-to-use application. My guess is that it would break down to the “usual suspects” + a fistful of exotic feeds in the end.
And, maybe that’s some old-fashioned idea of mine again- Editors will become more important again. The “System” as you call it won’t be smart enough to replace experienced editor’s hands to put together content. I’d bet on that!
Ok, for example politicians or wallstreet brokers already read maybe 10-20 newspapers a day. But what about the majority who are not part of this kind of business? The everyday newspaper-subscriber kindof persons?
I mean curious as I am- can you tell me how to sort these things out? I totally agree that things are going to change and that traditional reporting will loose rapidly. But I would be more interested in how they can be solved. I know that it’s going to happen…
December 14th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
M - I’m sure you do think big. Apologies. I don’t think we will have to rely 100% on individual editors - clever systems that analyse what the masses are interested in will help do that TOO. P
December 14th, 2005 at 5:04 pm
Yeah, I go for not need 100% Editor, too.
There won’t be old-school-editors style anymore. Still I think some kind of editors (or maybe editor systems, networks whatsoever) will be needed. Smells like a bet.
I think press/news distribution is one field that goes with the classical media sales drop-story. The newsagencies, press companies etc. haven’t reacted to changing customer reception either. Or did I miss something big here?
December 14th, 2005 at 5:28 pm