Traditional News Media Lead Blogs By 2.5 Hours

Peace Corps Online writes "The NY Times reports that researchers at Cornell studying the news cycle by looking for repeated phrases and tracking some 90 million articles and blog posts which appeared from August through October 2008 on 1.6 million mainstream media sites and blogs, have discovered that for the most part, traditional news outlets lead and the blogs follow, typically by 2.5 hours. The researchers studied frequently repeated short phrases, the equivalent of 'genetic signatures' for ideas. The biggest text-snippet surge found in the study — 'lipstick on a pig' originated in Barack Obama's colorful put-down of the claim by Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin that they were the genuine voices for change in the campaign. The researchers' paper, 'Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle,' (PDF) shows that although most news flowed from the traditional media to the blogs, 3.5 percent of story lines originated in the blogs and later made their way to traditional media."

Comments

And that NYT article

[Lorens]

did it appear on the NYT site 2.5 hours after the paper came out?

Re:Nobody Cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeatedly!

Slashdot screws the average.

[prichardson]

The problem is also that they averaged in slashdot with the other blogs. Without Slashdot's "yesterday's news today" and week-old repeats I'm sure the blog average would be higher.

Film at 11

[neiras]

I think the blogger thought process goes something like this.

CNN has a BREAKING NEWS headline. Quick! I'll post it on my blog and the huddled masses on the Internet will look up to me for being so much better informed than they are!"

All they want is your respect! They want to stand out in a crowd! THEY HEARD IT FIRST! The proof is right there, in their wordpress history!

2.5 hours lead time is nothing

[jsse]

Traditional news sometime can even lead the reality. Bloggers simply cannot top them without psychic or divine intervention.

Re:Nobody Cares

[MachDelta]

And don't forget 2.5 months later!

Re:Nobody Cares

[oldhack]

Yeah, but they make it up with dupes.

Re:Nobody Cares

[xouumalperxe]

That's because it's recursive, and lags 2.5 hours behind itself.

Re:It took them this long?

[smittyoneeach]

The lack of an obvious "Blame Bush" angle proved an impediment.