The Convoluted Life Cycle of a News Story

ideonexus writes "Once upon a time, newspapers were considered the "first draft of history." Today, rather than the daily episodic updates of major news stories developing a narrative over time, we have a perpetual stream of factoids from which a story emerges. Lauren Rabaino of mediabistro details this new lifecycle of a newspaper story, from tweets to blog posts to an eventual print edition, and asks What are the best standards of practice? Should news sources provide a single web address with a stream of updates, post new blog entries that link to older ones, or should they adopt a Wiki approach to the news — revising a single story with a history of revisions available behind the scenes?"

Comments

A Press Release Is Written

[billstewart]

Depending on the circumstances, the press release might get written by a business trying to push their next product release or dis their competitor's new product, or it might get written by a government agency trying to increase its clout within the government or as part of a longer-running PR campaign.

Then the press release is sent to the press, some of whom ignore it, some of whom mindlessly print it, and some of whom decide it's a good enough story for their market so they talk about it on radio or TV or give it print space.

Then other commenters start giving it coverage, whether that's talk radio ranting about how bad or good it is or somebody submitting it to Slashdot or whatever.

Then the tweets and the blogosphere get it. That doesn't mean they don't start stories on their own, but the people with interests in controlling the press or touting their products don't leave it to chance. (That's not even counting the ones where the tweets and blogosphere get started by astroturf, which is also pretty common today as an alternative business model to astroturfing the AP, Washington Post, or EE Times.)

Re:Example of How Not to Do It

[Baloroth]

I think the lesson there is: don't spin the headline. Never stop happening, of course, but if we really wanted fair news sources they should make the headline as non-biased as possible. The exact same story with two different headlines can, in fact, be taken two different ways. In fact both may be valid interpretations of the evidence as presented in the story, but a headline will lead 99% of people to one conclusion over the other.

Newspapers have known for years that you can put whatever the hell you want for a headline and people will believe it, even if the facts in the story don't support it. Hell, some news stories will directly contradict the headline... but they will do it towards the end. Most people don't read that far, so most readers end up believing whatever the headline says, no matter how stupid, sometimes even if they read the article itself. You could say that implies people are stupid, but I think it has more to do with the book-by-it's cover phenomenon. First impressions tend to carry through.

Re:News Via Wiki?

[Cbs228]

Sure, but how many Wikipedia users—not editors or regular contributors, but users—actually check the revision logs or old versions of the page? Even writers who are using Wikipedia as a primary source don't do that much fact checking. Users don't always have the greatest attention span in the world, and burying stuff on another page is a sure-fire way to get people to ignore it. If you put revision information three or more clicks away, or sequester it in a registration-required (or paywall-required) page, how many people will follow it? News-gathering organizations have a reputation to maintain, and they have every incentive not to admit that they are (or ever were) wrong.

I think that wikis should have a visualization tool for paragraphs, highlighting text like a spell-checker in a word processor or a syntax-checker in an IDE. The visualization tool should represent how new, and how frequently-revised, a particular section of text is. This will allow casual readers to easily spot points of contention and text that may require further validation.

Modern Media Story Development Process

[EmagGeek]

1) Event happens
2) Field reporter sends details to news office
3) News office embellishes the story to add sensationalism, interest, and other compelling things
4) Marketing office adds advertiser tie-ins and paid referral language
5) Story is published
6) ...
7) Fact Checking

The Newscorp News Cycle.

[mjwx]

1) Pick unpopular issue.

2) Ignore all facts on the issue.

3) Tie unpopular issue to politician Murdoch does not like.

4) ????.

5) Profit.

6) Complain that the politician is now suing you for Libel.

Re:I have a novel idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't do that too much. Instead they just bury stories outright. Back in the day Watergate, an office break in and cover up, was enough to lose a president his job. Todays buried stories...

FBI funding drug cartels to buy guns from ATF illegally resulting in over 200 killings and 2000 guns in hands of criminals using them.
1.4$ Billion given to failed company run by DNC supporter Robert Kennedy.
500$ Million to a solar company so they wouldn't announce layoffs within a week of an election.
$2 Billion given to oil drilling in Brazil owned by DNC supporter.
Oil pipeline prevented from being built because RNC supporters were investors.
Shutting down hundreds of auto dealerships based on DNC contributions and not performance, by the executive branch.

Each of these is FAR worse than Watergate, and ALL were perpetuated by Obama or his direct reports. All buried as much as possible, no spin needed, just don't report.