Speed Kills: Why Being the First to Break News Means You Aren’t the Last
July 20th, 2009Author: John Ratcliffe-Lee
Meme Curve | Zachary M. Seward, The Nieman Journalism Lab
Last week, Zachary M. Seward at The Nieman Journalism Lab put together an interesting post about breaking news, the origins of memes and how the influence of news orginzations (blogs included) fit into the big picture of information dissemination on the web. From the post:
Another way of looking at the data is that influential blogs hanging out on the far-left tail are more likely to report on iterative developments as they happen, while mainstream news outlets feel compelled to fit memes into a broader narrative. The study lists several phrases that were first “discovered” by blogs more than a week before peaking, like when Sarah Palin quoted Ronald Reagan at the end of a debate. That immediately raised flags among bloggers who identified the quote’s origins in a 1961 Reagan speech opposing Medicare, but it didn’t gain traction until more than a week later, when Medicare briefly became an issue in the 2008 campaign.
However you view the chart, it feels like each news organization has situated itself quite intentionally along the curve, staking out a role in the political news cycle. With the meme-tracking technique demonstrated in Kleinberg’s study, news outlets could themselves keep track of where they stand and adjust their reporting strategy if they prefer another spot on the cure. They might consider, for instance, whether they add anything at all to the political discourse by reporting on a meme so close to its peak.
This falls in line pretty succintly with the constant argument surrounding networks like Twitter vs. networks like CNN when it comes to “breaking news.” Lots of critics cry that major news networks are far behind the “8 ball” when it comes to this capacity. While that might be true when it comes to event-reporting, I’m often seeing too many people make blind arguments/sweeping generalizations about news outlets for other types of reporting. It’s pretty tough for 140 characters to give you all the context you’ll ever need about current events and, according to Zach’s research, it looks like news organizations large and small are appropriately finding their place in line vs. constantly fueling an arms race that will likely never end.
