As news sources proliferate and the methods used to deliver the news become faster and more efficient, twin problems arise. First, when every rumor and unconfirmed report can spread like wildfire almost as soon as it’s generated, how do you figure out what information to trust? And second, if you’re neither able nor inclined to spend every waking moment plugged into a half dozen news streams, how do you stay informed?
Here are four links looking at various aspects of this issue:
Toward a Slow-News Movement
Mediactive | November 8, 2009
In this post, Dan Gillmor proposes augmenting the round-the-clock news cycle with a movement toward “slow news” — news that’s less up-to-the-minute but more verified and trustworthy.
Quote: It comes down to this: The faster the news accelerates, the slower I’m inclined to believe anything I hear – and the harder I look for the coverage that pulls together the most facts with the most clarity about what’s known and what’s speculation.
A short defense of daily publishing
editor.blogspot.com | May 13, 2009
Howard Weaver writes that while the daily news cycle is outdated as a vehicle for reporting facts as they arise, a daily newspaper still has a valuable role to fill if it steps beyond blow-by-blow descriptions of events.
Quote: I’ve been arguing for years that newspapers – yes, printed, daily newspapers – have a good long horizon on the value curve if they shift their focus to the value they already do best: summary, briefings, orientation, authentication. If a printed product did that well, the fact that it’s a once-a-day product would be a strength: a starting point, presumably first thing in the morning, which helped readers orient their day and prepare to parse and interpret all the fact-clotted data that would wash over the ceaselessly for the rest of the day.
The 3 key parts of news stories you usually don’t get
Newsless.org | August 19, 2009
Matt Thompson writes that although news stories always tell us what just happened, they tend to be less reliable at providing context and meaning.
Quote: As long as the news is structured solely around what just happened, journalists are going to be fighting a rough battle. With a latest-news-only approach, we stoke demand for journalism by trying to snag people’s attention with each new development. There’s another way, one that leads to a more informed and more loyal public, and allows us to do better work.
How do we serve both engaged community members and casual audience members?
Wired Journalists | November 4, 2009
This is a discussion I started the other day on Wired Journalists, dealing with how to best serve the people who aren’t following the news every minute of the day and don’t want to hunt through a dozen different pages to find the basics of what they need to know.
Quote: We’re all news junkies here, so I think we need to remind ourselves once in a while that not everybody is like us. That there are people who will say “Look, I don’t want to have a conversation with the news — I just want to take 10 minutes in the morning and find out what’s going on.”