How To Split An Atom

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Video killed the radio star, everyone and their kid brother knows that. What probably hasn’t made it onto your radar is that blogging and its surrounding culture has killed news piece. That’s right, news is dead and we’ve killed it.

How? It all boils down distribution.

. . .But It’s OK

For a local newspaper, distribution is limited to a small area (town, city, state) and so are its audience’s interests. People in Orlando, for instance, buy the Orlando Sentinel to get information about hurricanes and the Magic and such. This is great for the Sentinel reporters because it means that they aren’t fighting with the big national brands for scoops. News for them is literally in their backyards.

For blogs and their sister institutions 24 hour news channels the audience can be as big as a nation and their interests range from the mainstream to the deeply niche. Especially for blogs that cover broad industries like technology and politics, everyone from the huge players down to the average Joes are hunting through the same haystack for the same needles.

Another story about an Apple release!

Iraq, oh boy!

As a result, even the most tightly held exclusive will be copied 100 times within minutes of the publish button being hit. It’s just a fact of life.

For a normal reader who doesn’t keep track of the machinations of the blogosphere it’s impossible to tell who “made the news,” who broke the story or who should get the credit (traffic) for their hard work. For the average reader, much like for the average viewer of 24 hour news, it’s not the scoop that matters it’s the spin.

In a world where news doesn’t exist, the only thing that matters at all is the spin, the analysis. We live in a opinion economy where facts are only as important as what you think about them. The only scoops that anyone can hope for are the niche stories and unless you are a bigger player in that niche, even those don’t really matter.

What does it all mean? Digital writers, it’s time to stop trying to be the first to publish and instead time to go back to providing the most value. Fox News and CNN provide similar content, the only difference between them is how they present it — what they choose to highlight and what they choose to ignore. As sad as it might be, it’s not the facts that drive viewers, it’s the biases.

Web 2.0 Roundup

So next time a PR embargo or late rise has you cursing the sky for not being able to publish first realize that the fight isn’t over. Sure it’s great to do something first, but the real money is in doing it best. Best for your audience.

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