Mainstream Media Finally Catching On To How News Propagates

Techdirt is reporting that the mainstream press may finally be "getting it" when it comes to how the next generation of news readers consumes and shares news. One student summed it up very succinctly by saying "If the news is that important, it will find me." "According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well -- sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter -- reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com -- with a social one."

Comments

Please try to keep up.

[griffjon]

"sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks"

Except when the tubes are clogged and my emails take days to get through.

Really? People send each other news stories? Through email? And here I thought moving from making photocopies of the newspaper articles and mailing them through the postal system to using the fax machine was high tech!

Also; email's soooo 1990s. RSS, delicious for: tags and IM messages are how I keep up; mostly RSS.

Dear old media: I know things on the intarwebs change fast, but please try to keep up a bit better?

Re:The obvious down side

[indiejade]

Ever hear your grandma tell you not to believe everything you hear or read?

Actually, I have to remind my grandma to not believe everything she hears and sees on Fox News.

Re:Here's the FAQ

[ShieldW0lf]

People have learned from experience that the professional news isn't trustworthy. They co-operate to do the best they can in the absence of reputable news sources. How obvious and inevitable. How incredibly insulated from reality do you have to be to not see this?

Hardly

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Sure, that works for popular news. That's why CNN, foxnews, digg, reddit, etc all have news on Britney Spears or Brad Pitt. If the news gets that critical mass of people, it will make the rounds.

In the Old Media? Hardly.

Case in point: Ron Paul.

His grass roots campaign - composed mainly of the Internet-connected, because the MSM totally suppressed news of him - ended up with a head count comparable to the US troop strength in Iraq and broke all previous fundraising records via individual contributions averaging about $100.

If the operators of the corporate media don't want a story to get out they're fully capable of sitting on it no matter HOW popular is becomes by word-of-mouth - or word-of-net.