Roger Ebert has an interesting post on the instantaneous nature of modern news. In the olden days, 2007, you went an hour or six between news bulletins. Flip-floppers evened out their flip-flopping between the bulletins. If they didn’t, then it was news. Train smashes came to a rest before you heard about it. You saw Paris Hilton’s knickers after she had put them on, not as she put them on.
In these modern days, 2008, you can follow every single flip-flop as it happens, in real time, right now. Sometimes before it happens. We watch every train and the slightest wobble focuses us on a possible train smash. If it doesn’t smash it was “a close one” and if it does smash we are thankful we saw it happen as it happened. I’m guessing some people are developing super-hero powers that will allow them to stop a train smash they see happening on Twitter. Otherwise they are just necro-train-spotters.
In all seriousness there is a problem here. Some stories only become stories at their conclusions. You can watch an event and see all the twists and turns and at the end come out exactly where you were when you started.
It’s true that only reading the ending can leave you misinformed, left standing in the shallow end of knowledge. But you can’t and shouldn’t be trying to swim in every stream. You’ll likely just drown and come round to David Hasselhoff giving you CPR and asking you what happened; No idea David, I blacked out trying to swallow the ocean.
The news team are there to aggregate events over time. Distill the twisted path of the crooked politician into an arrow pointing straight at the corruption.
Different events do play out over different periods but you still should be picking an aggregated view. Otherwise go and become a reporter. Maybe only for just one story that is really important to you, the one you want to know “how did it come to be.” When the reporter becomes simply a relay of Here & Now you don’t get much value out of following her. You might as well be there yourself instead of clicking Follow on 900 Twitter users.
