Forget Breaking The News, How About Spreading The News?

from the news-distributors,-not-creators dept

Mon, Sep 27th 2004 3:23pm — Mike Masnick

While we've been having a bit of a discussion about whether or not breaking the news is more important than the news itself, one interesting thing to think about is how a shift in the way people use news may change the way news organizations work. Following a story about how news of a popular Dutch singer's death was quickly passed via SMS messages (doubling the number of such messages sent at one point), I've written a slightly longer piece for TheFeature, wondering if thinking about how news is distributed these days might change how news organizations view their own business. Rather than publishing on set schedules and getting everyone to come to you, the internet via email and blogs, and mobile phones via calls and text messaging, let everyone distribute the news. News is no longer about just consuming it, but also sharing it (often with additional information, insight and analysis). Suddenly, "breaking" the news takes on a different type of importance altogether -- and news organizations may want to focus more on making it easier for people to share and annotate the news, rather than just trying to draw people in to read/watch/listen to the news they have.

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