Real Time is On Time when it comes to news

Posted on June 28, 2009 by Sean Wolverton — Leave a Comment

I’m starting to get fatigued from all the Michael Jackson coverage, but couldn’t resist being impressed by this post on the Loosewire blog about the online timing of MJ’s death reports and the gap between online media such as TMZ (who broke the news), and the mainstream media, who appeared flatfooted and trailed online news sources by over an hour in announcing Jackson’s death. The chronology of how the news broke online is fascinating, and he notes the difference in approach between online news sources and mainstream media:

It’s a strange new world where information travels this quickly. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing that traditional media tries to confirm stories the old fashioned way.

But the problem is the gap it leaves.

Jeremy further wrote that Twitter is the last piece of the puzzle, offering real time search for information that feeds the public’s need for information in a way that search engines (which still need to crawl the web) and traditional news sources cannot. This is a point my colleague David Patton (formerly of WSJ.Com) also made in this post, entitled “Search Engines Need to Get Into Real Time.”

Of course in spite of all the celebration of how online media is scooping mainstream media, there are instances when the web gets it wrong, sometimes deliberately.  Witness the number of reports about the supposed death of Jeff Goldblum, Harrison Ford and Natalie Portman, and most remarkably, the number of gullible people who believe them.

On the flip side of the coin there are the cynical ones such as celebrity blogger Perez Hilton who caught a firestorm when he thought Jackson faked his death. (“Perez Hilton’s Despicable Coverage of Michael Jackson’s Death”)

Strange new world indeed.