Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

6 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. And that NYT article by Lorens · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  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 oGMo · · Score: 5, Insightful
      This is because you're not thinking big enough. Local news is world news: something always happens somewhere. It's a matter of which people care about it. Traditional media has capitalized on high-profile stories that will draw lots of attention ("low-hanging fruit," to use the annoying buzzphrase).

      However, this means we're missing a huge chunk of actual world news. While we know of a few major items, we don't know about the aggregate of everything else. How many people died today? Glancing at Google News, you might note that maybe some people died from bombings, and a few others in battle, and maybe a few to flu. But that's a very tiny selection. High profile cases. How many people died in traffic accidents? Or from other disease or poor health? Old age? What regions? What were the numbers?

      This is actual interesting information which would probably change our perspective drastically on a lot of issues. Unfortunately it takes a good bit of work to put it together, and it doesn't quite get you glamorous headlines. But it's world news, and the sort of thing that would be worth paying for.

      --

      Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage

    3. Re:So what's next? by abigsmurf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is no way of monetising that will keep geeks happy. It's a myth peddled by people who want to justify the morality of blocking every ad, no matter how unintrusive.

      The ways of making money:

      Subscription - few people are willing to subscribe to a single site.

      advertising - adblock. Only cast iron method of getting around it is by putting ads before videos and not displaying any videos until the ad has played through. But not every news site does videos.

      Merchandise - CNN don't sell many DVDs and CNN branded T-shirts are hardly going to fly off the shelves.

      Donations - People point to Wiki as an example of this being successful but it simply isn't viable for 99% of sites. If people donate at all they donate once and that's it. Wiki survives because of hard campaining for donations and because it looks good for companies to donate to.

      Licencing content - when blogs can rip out all the juicy info from an article and just link to the source at the bottom, this simply isn't viable (that and you're moving the revenue problem downstream)

      Only possible solution I could see is a subcription service that covers hundreds of sites. You pay $4.99 a month and the money gets divided up between sites based on page views. However this is a nightmare to set up and get people on board and you may find it's about as successful as regular subscriptions.

  3. Re:Not surprising by Asdanf · · Score: 5, Informative

    It would be more interesting to study the fastest of the blog posts, say 5%, and see whether they beat the media.

    Fortunately, the researchers agree with you and did just that. And it turns out that some blogs do usually break stories before the MSM. I wonder why the NYTimes didn't lead with that finding...