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

Cell phone voicemail

[Dark$ide]

Here in the UK all the news comes from hacking cell phone voicemail systems.

Example of How Not to Do It

[ideonexus]

I couldn't figure out a way to fit it into the summary, but I was bothered by the way Reuters recently handled their story claiming George Soros was funding Occupy Wall Street (OWS), first running a headline claiming a connection but with a story that offered very spurious evidence of monetary support for the movement, and then taking that story down under heavy criticism from other news sources and reposting the exact same story with a headline absolving Soros of any connection to OWS with a new link, while simultaneously killing the link to the old story without any explanation.

It was extremely problematic for people debating online, as my conservative friends suddenly had their link go dead, while my liberal friends suddenly had the same story but with a headline supporting their position. It was the same exact story, but since nobody RTFAs, the headline was the most important piece of evidence in the debate.

I post this example, not to dredge up some off-topic flamewar about OWS, but because it seems like a pretty clear cut case of how we don't want news agencies operating. I read a comment on Slashdot recently that the reason we aren't allowed to modify our comments is to prevent users from editing out things in order to accuse others of strawman attacks. If you screw up a fact, you post a correction. It seems News Organizations owe us the same courtesy.

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:Example of How Not to Do It

[Ethanol-fueled]

It was extremely problematic for people debating online...conservative friends...liberal friends.... It was the same exact story, but since nobody RTFAs, the headline was the most important piece of evidence in the debate.

Oh, yeah, "debating" online. A "debate" implies that all parties have at least some background information and are capable of critical thinking and intelligent discussion.

What you described in that case is just parroting. Like parrots, the two sides just repeat sound bites heard from people they happen to agree with. Liberals are all lazy homosexual communists, because Rush Limbaugh said so. Conservatives are dumb, cruel, racist Nazis because Keith Olbermann said so.

Parrots are the cause of America's inability to fix its own problems, especially when turned loose at the ballot box.

I have a novel idea.

[masternerdguy]

How about actually reporting the truth instead of slanting it to the political leaning of your respective audience?

Complimentary copy

[vlm]

I thought it was all about complimentary copy advertorials? They actually still have reporters?

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:A Press Release Is Written

[Anonymous Coward]

From my experience of the media (working on government events), I was shocked at just quite how bad it is. A great many reporters really do not bother to check the facts of what it is that they're reporting on, and instead ask each other instead of going to the bloody event 200 metres away, which they have access to, and are meant to go to from the press area which they're already in.
Myself and my coworkers had a good laugh at the press reports throughout the day, and those printed afterwards, comparing them to the events which we saw and experienced. It was after that, I started taking all news reports with a mine of salt.
As for the press releases from different interests, they're even worse.

Yo dog...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I've heard that those crazy neckbeards over in comp-sci solved the problem of how to manage, timestamp, and attribute revisions to a complex file or group of files that can be expected to be revised over time according to new information, requirements, or refinements. And solved it bloody decades ago. Revision control, people, it isn't just for sourcecode.

Combine that with some of the newer and more www/browser friendly automated merge-and-pretty-print stuff, it should be architecturally trivial to provide a stable URL for a story, a full revision history(including times and who made the revisions), along with related stories, the ability to track revision activity of specific comitters, etc, etc.

I enjoy a good bit of handwaving about how to "best" express complex structures within the limitations of obsolete formats as much as the next guy, and quite possibly more; but it just seems so pointless in this case: There isn't any need to cram the entire sausage-factory of news production into a few square inches of ink-on-dead-tree, so lots of nuanced bloviation on how to do that is just a lot of fluff over a toy problem(nothing wrong with toy problems, as a hobby; but they are a distraction if you are supposed to actually be working...)

If the process is complex, involves multiple inputs over time, from multiple people, then it is indeed impossible to cram without some loss of fidelity into a single static text lump. We could either wring our hands over what transform algorithm is most 'true', or we could just stop fucking around and use a format actually designed to capture something structured that way. This doesn't seem like a difficult decision.

"Homeless Veteran Bites Dog"

[Anonymous Coward]

  update: Homeless man was not a veteran.

  update 2: Unconfirmed whether man was homeless or not.

  update 3: Actually the dog bit the man, not the other way around.

  update 4: The victim was a 9-year old boy, and the dog was a pit bull mix. Boy lived down the street.

  update 5: Owner of the pit bull failed to register dog as dangerous breed with authorities.

  update 6: The dog was a fox terrier, no special registration was required.

  update 7: Bite by dog not confirmed, but there was a lot of loud barking.

News Via Wiki?

[Cbs228]

I seem to recall another civilization where news stories were subject to constant, behind-the-scenes revisions. I read about it in a book. One must always take care to interpret the past correctly, through the darkly-tinted lenses of our current social and political mindset. After all, it would simply be unsettling if there were anything at all in our history that happened to be politically insensitive or inconvenient for our current religious, economic, or secular leadership. Simply revising or "reinterpreting" key facts and events go a long way towards removing all of that troubling cognitive dissonance; such dissonance could cause people to question the way things are right now. Sadly, I can't really remember any more details about this civilization, because my e-books retailer erased every copy of it.

News via Wiki? I don't think so.

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.

It's worse here

[macwhizkid]

Here in the US all our news comes from the UK from hacking cell phone voicemail systems.

Accuracy, Not Infotainverts

[Doc Ruby]

The best practice of a newspaper is for a reporter who understands the events to find the actual facts about the events, and tell them in a story that is accurate to those facts in terms the readers understand.

No news is made this way. Which is why nobody treats the news as anything but propaganda, whether they like their propaganda or not. All we've got is infotainverts.

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.