Commentary
How News Spreads Today: The Media-tization Of The Big Black Phone
- by Kendall Allen , November 16, 2009
It was exhilarating to feel on the inside of the news, just one step ahead of everybody else, if only by association to my dad the editor. Whether it was a gangland murder, a political scandal or labor clash -- the midnight call sparked action. It felt linear in those days: the call, the conversation, the drive, the going to press, then the thud on the doorstep next day and the community buzz in the days that followed.
Later this would become even more personal. In high school, I was early to hear about a local scandal involving a very important authority figure in my life. Dad informed me over breakfast of devastating news that would break later that day and immediately change the lives of many of my friends. Even later, I jumped at the chance to be part of the midnight ride the night of the attempted Gorbachev coup, joining my dad in the newsroom as the news package was built for release. But no matter what, it always started with one phone call.
The Big Black Phone as Relic
Flash-forward to the advances in telecommunications and mobile, sweeping alterations to the news business, the onset of the blogosphere, the diversification of content vehicles and distribution, the tentacles of social media and micro-blogging. Now, no word is encompassing enough to describe the scope of change within the media environment -- and to describe how news breaks and travels today.
I find examples of this flow change all the time now. I recall being out at my parents' lake house one random summer day. Glancing down at my BlackBerry, I noted, "Oh, my god. Dad, Tim Russert just died." Thanks to New York Times alerts, Twitter activity cloaking any given week, and RSS, this was not an isolated instance. Many times, I've blurted out some information delivered via these new means at odd times of the day. And, we see how notification transmits for journalists today: in a way much less linear, more dynamic, more wired, more pocket- or desktop-level. To perhaps oversimplify, the role of the black phone has forever changed.
Media as Drama Queen
On a plane ride west, I am thinking about this transformation as I dig into the Columbia Journalism Review's November issue: "The Reconstruction of American Journalism." In a piece titled "Mourning Becomes Electric," Michael Schudson and Julia Sonnevend address research on the media treatment of mourning rituals. This research, done by Mervi Pantti and Johanna Sumiala, focuses on the change in the nature of media activity around mourning today, with the lifting of technological limitations.
Considering this research, Schudson and Sonnevend express their own point of view: "Fragmented. Few words are used more often to describe the media environment today. People disappear into their iPods, iPhones, BlackBerrys, Kindles, and laptops. They tweet, blog, Facebook, podcast and wend their way through their favorite cultural political sites. In short, they manufacture their own media bubbles and seem to live in separate universes. Nonetheless, some iconic events win the attention of tens of millions of us. These events can be about celebration, trauma, or remembrance; joyful or tragic, they bring us together - at least for a few hours or a few days."
The authors point to media's role in transporting mourning to almost theatrical levels, providing several iconic examples:
According to the article's authors, the researchers "emphasize that media-tized religious and nonreligious mourning rituals still have important cohesive roles for societies. Neither television nor God seem to have passed away in the Twitter era. Today's media environment, fragmented as it is, remains a source of community, national, and even global solidarity."
advertisement
advertisement
The Persistence of
Congregation
That I am reading this article on this particular journey seems a vivid coincidence. I am traveling to L.A. for the memorial of my old high school swim team buddy, who
recently passed away. As the news of his death hit, phones rang, emails flew, Facebook updates and texts gradually regathered the old school brood. It was obvious things had changed in the way we now,
so swiftly, communicated with and dealt with each other.
Many of my friends had originally guffawed at these communications practices; others were ensconced and swift to connect and
transmit. But, with a readiness that perhaps could not exist in prior times, from points far and wide, we are ALL showing up in L.A., ASAP. Sped along by connectivity, perhaps fueled by the poignance
of grief, congregation persists.
In what we most days agree is a profoundly intricate communication sphere -- fragmented or converged, depending on whom you are talking to -- we might see a
downside to all this connectivity and conveyance. People gripe about sterile vehicles, the loss of poetry, the loss of authenticity. They pine for the big black phone.
But, on any given
day, we also can see what this trend enables, even just taking the relationship between media and mourning as a useful example. In a newly connective world, the timelessness of our urge for connection
and congregation is sweet, and obvious.
Agreed. I get most of my breaking news and obscure news from Twitter and Facebook....usually somebody dying unexpectedly or an interesting story that is below the mainstream media radar.
Good piece! Wish my dad had been a newspaperman instead of a pharmaceutical salesguy....
"As the news of his death hit, phones rang, emails flew, Facebook updates and texts gradually regathered the old school brood. It was obvious things had changed in the way we now, so swiftly, communicated with and dealt with each other."
It makes me think about the movie "The Big Chill" a time before email, Facebook, cell phones, even faxes. How did that circle friends learn about another friend's death? Looking back, I wonder how my friends and I got a group together back when there was nothing but a black phone to make the connection. I guess we just didn't know any better ...
Thanks for the re-thinking of what is too often thought of as 'information overload'. Now, what seems like clutter will be more welcomed as a desire for Congregation. Nice!
Excellant and insightful. Having myself been a child of the greater Philadelphia area and avid reader of the Philadelphia Inquirer made the back ground of this piece very personal and now having my own online marketing and consulting firm continues to underscore the importance of good communication, no matter the format it comes in. Good stuff keep it up!
I began reading 2 papers a day since my mother always did. They were the Morning Inquirer and Evening Bulletin. Now, I am a former Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. employee. FB, twits and other almost unsocial media do not replace the education one receives reading a newspaper. Snip snaps are good for snip snaps and unfortunely many people try to excuse themselves from learning about a topic by hooking into an unsubstantiated blurb. If the person who found out about a person only by FB or twit instead of a personal phone call, then probably they really weren't such close friends. FB, twits and email all have their place. Let's just not confuse the usage of it all.
Great article - it made me think about how I consume news these days. Twitter/FB help me filter what I want and don't want to dig into. I see headlines (Balloon boy's parents fess up!) and feel, momentarily, like I have a quick edge on breaking news. I realize that these particular headlines are again filtered by WHO I follow and WHAT they find interesting.
3-4 times a day I'll go to Google's news page and see what's breaking and who's covering. I can dig deeper, esp. with coverage from NYT, CNN, WP, etc. if I feel like it. By the time the next morning newspaper rolls around (which I canceled earlier this year), the news is old to me - even though it appears fresh on the paper. No, I rarely watch TV news. Yes, I listen to NPR in a very short commute - and find their news more in-depth but ultimately repetitive if I listen long enough.
I took Journalism all through HS and spent years as a radio reporter/anchor, so following breaking news is in my blood, even though it's not my job any more. I find it interesting to watch the evolution of how news spreads...
I'm not so sure about this, Kendall. I think it may be the 'delusion of centrality.' These events occur whether we know about them or not. No matter how short the interval, the past cannot be undone. (Nor 're-done'.)
There are at least two issues here: "velocity" and "veracity." The latter being the difference between gossip and reporting.
We do almost nothing about the information we don't have, and then, once we have it, we may or may not do something about it. I can know something and do something about it, which is an act manifested externally, kinetically, in the physical world (like what happened after your dad got those midnight phone calls.
Clearly, "velocity" of information plays a major role in the semantic world, but in the physical world velocity of information is meaningless unless there is something to be done about it.
As a paperboy for the Philadelphia Bulletin in the late '50s, I used to imagine how I was changing the world people lived in by dropping the paper on their lawn or front porch in the wee hours of the morning in my small South Jersey town. Once Mr. Stevenson unfolded the paper, his entire family’s agenda could change. Because I scanned the headlines while folding the papers, I had a pretty good sense of what would happen around the breakfast table.
Today, there could be an app associated with subscribers in a defined area, linked to individual "Notifications and Alerts" apps on their Smart phone. Mom might have paid a nickel more to subscribe to advisories from the schools her girls attend. Dad could have automatically placed an "alert" on his kid’s mobile telling her to wait at school until he got there... this is not 'fee-based,' it's 'service-based' for a fee that is worth paying. Yes, it's one of the reasons you subscribe to the Philadelphia Bulletin (or should I say, "…used to?"). Maybe subscribers at $20 a month can customize “Notice and Alerts.” A first rate news organization might contribute to the “veracity” engine, that moderates the velocity factor. You’d still be leveraging the journalism assets –even more so. Get it first, get it right! There’s money in it!
The news media have to get hip to this. Charging us for information that we can't do anything about (or with) is not a sustainable model, Apple sells billions of apps, because they are selling us something that allows us to do something else with the information we receive on our iPhone. The apps let "us" interact with the information and "use" it for something. If the news isn’t useful for something, why report it. Go on. Use your imagination for something more than a slogan like: “News you can use.” Show me.
Being only 23, my family has had a computer (and *gasp* AOL) as far back I remember. As soon as I was old enough to become interested in news stories, the computer was my immediate source. No questions asked. During my time at college, I tried a subscription to the Post, but I just never felt at home reading the news that way. I felt like it was already outdated by the time it got to me. After the paper is printed and delivered, and by the time I had a minute to sit down and read, that breaking news was more than a few hours old. Plus the whole tree-killing side. I decided to cancel by subscription and stick to what I knew. Granted, sometimes I get my gossip news via tweets and fbook posts, I try to take everything with a grain of salt until I see it on a more trusted source.
anyways, an interesting read for sure. just th point of view of a youngin'.
http://www.redshiftagency.com/
Footnote: Immediacy does not equal important. Importance of information is not usually immediate. Be a twit all you want, but read the paper.
Thanks, all, for the personalized and thoughtful commentary.
David, in particular -- as some of what I wrote in my Monday piece was sheer personal musing and some of it, a take on the CJR perspective from a few sides -- I definitely would like to distill your position. At least in specific response to what I penned. I think we agree on much. But, I was writing in a couple veins.
Stand-alone -- yes, your assorted points resonate -- on monetization and news org authority.
But... I would love to hear more, specifically on what wrongly rubs, as the response seemed reflexive. But I could not track it back! Always happy to engage. No email on your profile... or I directly would write to you.
kma@influencecollective.com
Inquiring mind looking for the nut graph. Do tell! Would love to chat.
K