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Traditional News Media Lead Blogs By 2.5 Hours

Posted by timothy on from the but-the-letters-to-the-editor-are-much-quicker dept.

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."

19 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Nobody Cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    /. puts the best bits all in one neat package regardless where its from.

    1. Re:Nobody Cares by Hope+Thelps · · Score: 3, Interesting

      /. puts the best bits all in one neat package regardless where its from.

      Plus, I'd just feel stupid buying a newspaper in order to NOT read any of the articles and just get on with discussing them anyway - what a waste of money. Slashdot makes it feel natural.

      --
      To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
    2. Re:Nobody Cares by fractoid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Contrariwise, traditional 'read-only' media is increasingly annoying to me. I'll hear some news snippet on the radio and want to post a comment.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    3. Re:Nobody Cares by operator_error · · Score: 4, Interesting

      But who on /. bothers to RTFA anyway?

      And is this a higher percentage than Digg's article/quality-comment ratio? Mind you, the comments on digg are often so inane, if it wasn't for the articles, what's the point? In fact let me continue. It seems the comments by John & Jane Q. Public left on various 'news' articles are often rather mindless, semi-anonymous comments mostly of shock value. Who bothers reading those? What does one hope to gain.

      At least on /. I can learn to hack cheap routers from the comments left by readers.

    4. Re:Nobody Cares by MindKata · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "hear some news snippet on the radio and want to post a comment"

      Also this research wouldn't be able to detect if any news breaks first as a blog and then gets picked up by news organizations. The news organizations can spread the news wide as they have many readers, but the initial seed of news can still come from Blogs.

      For example, I was watching in real time the night news broke of Michael Jackson had died. It was very evident the TV people were using the Internet news as their main source of initial information. The first mention he died came from the TMZ blog who were then quoted by TV people about the unconfirmed death, and then as soon as the LA Times web site joined TMZ in publishing he had (maybe) died (as yet unconfirmed), then suddenly all TV companies all jumped at the same time onto the bandwagon very evidently desperate not to be left behind in breaking the news.

      My one concern with this Cornell research is that news organizations will try to manipulate it into implying they and only they feed news and so they ultimately control that news and so people are spreading copyright news. That relentless control freak Rupert Murdoch is determined to force news into a payed for service and will bias and twist any news he can in his favor. News papers are driven by shared information on the Internet as much as they are driving the news.

      --
      There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
  2. So what's next? by PhantomHarlock · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Which brings up the point again...traditional media outlets will need to figure out how to monetize and stay in business, or all those blogs will no longer have a source for their stories. Then we'll have nothing left but crowdsourced news. Which is OK in a riot or a protest, but otherwise does not come with the depth of research from a good, non-lazy journalist that does his or her homework, uses multiple sources to back up facts, etc. etc.

    So what's the future look like? A merging of the blogosphere and traditional media to something new?

    1. Re:So what's next? by davmoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem is most traditional media outlets aren't doing that style of journalism any more. They fire as many of their local people as they can, and rely even more on AP and the intarwebs. Instead of bringing me in-depth local news that I can't get anywhere else and would be willing to pay for, they bring me news that I can find in 470 other locations for free.

      --
      I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
    2. Re:So what's next? by DavidD_CA · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And then they wonder why no one wants to pay them $20/mo for a subscription.

      You've hit the nail on the head. And this is why I think there will always be a place, albiet much smaller, for traditional reporters.

      And that place won't be on dead trees. After all, reporting has nothing to do with the medium it's presented in.

      --
      -David
    3. Re:So what's next? by Killer+Orca · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well you might want local news, but some people want world and national news. I hate it when the local news airs here, for the most part I could care less, I can't imagine going out of my way to read about mundane events in my city, "City losing money", "Local man killed" "Pet adoption on the rise" blah, blah, blah.

    4. Re:So what's next? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is quite an interesting point you make. You're putting forward a distinction between two different types of world news.

      A) A single event that affects the entire world (ex: the nasdaq loses 5%)

      B) The same local scale event that occurs everywhere in a span of time (ex: 2300 different small armed conflicts killed 3000 people around the world today)

      A-type events are covered by traditional media and from a local perspective by bloggers on location

      B-type events aren't reported by anyone and are probably inaccessible to traditional media. You're suggesting to aggregate what all the non-traditional sources are reporting to get a global picture of the local events.

      Interesting.

    5. Re:So what's next? by superwiz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You forgot to mention going out of business of most main-stream media (aka consolidation). So that only the intelligent news reporters and news sources would stay in business. The proliferation of MSM has reduced competitiveness of news reporting. Which has reduced quality. This is purely symbolic, but I spotted 2 typos on NYTimes front page (front page!!!) within the last year. If they are this careful with their front page, you can imagine how careful they are with they fact checking and analysis. There is simply too much job security in that business. When we moved from having 80% of people working on farms to 5% of people working on farms, which farmers do you think stayed employed? The least competent ones?

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  3. Re:Slashdot screws the average. by DMalic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Nice one (and frighteningly accurate). Comparing traditional media to an average of blog speed is not exceptionally useful.

  4. Self-serving crap by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Oh, yeah...the New York Times, the poster child for Old Media, does a story and finds that they are better than the competition. Sorry, but I'd sooner believe an online pharmacy that did a survey and found that it was better than the competition. But, since it has the NYT name on it, the people in the know nod sagely and agree. Anyone shouting "the emperor has no clothes" is deemed as not part of the in-group and escorted to the door, never to be invited to the best parties again.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  5. CIA would pay $$$ for this kind of study by AHuxley · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How to shape with twitter in near real time. Iran was a good test run for that. 1000's of fake pro 'green' Iran bursts all at the same time, to get the topic as number one.
    All pre package and ready to look 'organic'.
    Then track and promote the end losers who fall for it and become the real grass roots.
    US Ethno-Political Conflict Simulator: Influencing Leaders and Followers, 3 Oct 2006 should give slashdot readers a taste of the fun the US gov has in the 3rd world.
    The only question is what is been done in the USA via data like this?
    http://wikileaks.org/wiki/US_Ethno-Political_Conflict_Simulator:_Influencing_Leaders_and_Followers%2C_3_Oct_2006

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  6. Statements & Interviews by Aceticon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hardly surprising.

    The study measured the time that ideas/memes/stories took to come out. Given that nowadays a large number of "stories" are released by politicians/companies and most do so in a tightly controlled way, usually by means of "statements to the press" or "interviews".

    Guess who gets the press passes or the interviews? The press, not the bloggers.

    That said, blogs are almost entirely opinion pieces: they don't break the news, instead they give us the blogger's personal interpretations of the news (or opinion over the state of something or something-else in the world).

    The best blogs are those which analyze multiple news and events and bring them together with other knowledge to show us the patterns and flows behind the public facade: in a sense, investigative journalism on the cheap (they don't usually validate the sources).

  7. depends heavily on a lot of things.. by crossmr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm sure all of us have looked at digg once or twice and there are blog posts that get made quite popular there, develop a following and then end up in the paper.
    In fact anything that originates on the internet is likely to be reported about first in a blog than "traditional media".
    Many local stories might end up getting reported about first on a blog before "traditional media" if they're not high profile. The news has to get a reporter there first. then film it or write it. A blogger can see it, and do it right away if they have a smartphone or as soon as they get home/to a pc.

  8. It says something that blogs are more reliable.. by plasmacutter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    News organizations lead blogs, it's true, but they suffer repeated embarrassment as respondants do actual fact checking.

    Maybe the lesson here is they should hold their tongues and do real investigations into the issues they cover and offer balanced analysis rather than regurgitate press releases or empty ideological sound bytes.

    Blogs would lose relevance quickly if the news sources themselves provided this analysis along with truly open, community moderated, meta-moderated, and meta-meta-moderated response columns to help add any unmentioned perspectives, updates, or corrections.

    If traditional outlets don't take the time to properly research and compose their stories and don't offer true opportunities for community feedback they will always run second string to the likes of slashdot, reddit, and the daily show.

    --
    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
  9. Re:Well, duh? by rbarreira · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not true. The financial crisis (the reality of it, not just the optimism parts) has been much better covered by blogs than by traditional media.

    --

    The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
  10. Re:It says something that blogs are more reliable. by plasmacutter · · Score: 2, Interesting

    News organizations lead blogs, it's true, but they suffer repeated embarrassment as respondants do actual fact checking.

    I subscribe to FT, WSJ, NYT, The Economist, National Geographic, Smithsonian and Scientific American.

    I would submit that the number of factual errors per million words in each of these is *vastly* lower than what you'd get by having your bullshit community moderated nonsense.

    I mean, look at community websites for a minute, then realize that as much as you hate to admit it, traditional fact checkers are more reliable than asking a bunch of opinionated people to express their opinion about a fact, to determine it's truthiness.

    Here's to hoping that your blazingly idiotic and idealistic notions never become the norm, because that would be the death of accurate information.

    Ok, allow me to amend my previous claim.

    Factual errors includes the omission of information or perspectives thus producing a one-sided or outright dogmatic tone in an article.

    Heaviest example: music downloading.

    --
    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!