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.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team