I’m betting “Apple’s WWDC 2011 Announced Yesterday But Sold Out As We Went to Press” is not likely to be a headline found in my local news’ Business & Technology section this morning.
Not only will the story have already have come and gone, the dead tree newspaper will likely not even bother mentioning anything. The New York Times hasn’t posted anything about it. I can’t find anything in the Washington Post about it, either. Luckily nobody is relying on any of these outlets for announcements like this (as 10 hours after the fact is already far too late). This is not a newspapers-are-dead diatribe, it’s just that this is the kind of story that I find interesting and relevant. I would pay someone to deliver this story to me in a concise and timely manner.
Certainly, there are much more important things going on in the world lately. I do appreciate what these mainstream news organizations are doing instead: they are reporting from (and sometimes captured) behind enemy lines, sharing both important and mundane events through photography, and much more.
Here’s a graph I made to try and understand some of the common sources of news I encounter:
I’m not quite sure what to make of all this. But, I realize that timing is just one of many factors in the evolution of journalism: I heard about the WWDC announcement while checking twitter before getting out of bed this morning (long before I even received the announcement email from Apple). Though, I’ve waited until now to read in-depth stories on nuclear reactors and the Japan earthquakes. This, of course, is despite my ability to have watched, in real-time, a tsunami wave land on the east coast. I don’t know where to go to strike a good balance
Dev,
I like your graph as a way to visualize the continumn of information vs. the medium. It calls attention to the fact that our choices about the various forms are AND not OR . My mental graph would substitute “Reliable & Factual” for “Quality”, but I think we are using a similar metric.
Quick media is often too incomplete and lacking in thoughtful consideration of all sides of a story. But, it has the virtue of quickly drawing attention to an event. I find I filter any of the “analysis” and “conclusions” from the the quicker forms of media and wait for the slower forms where I place more attention on the conclusons and analysis.
Many news items are about complicated events with no black or white conclusions. And some of the media you identify actively avoid being black and white, such as the News Hour.
Two other “slow but deliberate” media I use are Smithsonian magazine and Scientific American. These have articles that are filling (like a 5 course meal) and avoid a lot of “sweets” (shrill emotional name calling) …
Sales, promotions, etc., always favor quick media as the are more advertizing motivated than news and analysis. I suspect there are a series of graphs that would show what media type is more suitable to the content type.
Thanks for posting.