All It Took Was the Death of Michael Jackson To Show Us Why New Media Will Overtake Old Media

It you were waiting for the day when you could finally write that case study entitled, "The Day New Media Made Old Media Look Really Slow and Decrepit," yesterday was the day.

Frankly, I was shocked at how much longer CNN waited to announce that Michael Jackson had died than everybody else did.

I think they actually waited for their sources to confirm the death before putting it out there for the public's consumption. Imagine that!

Seriously, though, here is a rough timeline that gives you an idea of how long they took. 

  • 5:30 p.m. – I was driving home when the local sports talk station broke the news via TMZ.com that Michael Jackson had passed away.
  • 5:45 p.m. – Flipped to "The Drive with Chris Myers and Steve Hartman" (because they broadcast nationally out of Los Angeles) and they already had experts on the show to talk about Jackson's untimely passing.
  • 6:00 p.m. – "Broke" the news to my wife and parents, who were visiting for dinner.  My one-year-old was largely unconcerned.  Meanwhile, CNN was still reporting only that Jackson had been rushed to the hospital.
  • 6:45 p.m. – Finished eating dinner.  (If you must know, my wife prepared a delicious meatloaf.) We convened in the living room.  CNN is now speaking with the family spokesperson who is unable to tell us if Jackson has, indeed, died.
  • 7:00 p.m. – Finally, nearly two hours after the news first broke, the anchor interrupts entertainment reporter, A.J. Hammer, to say that they can confirm the King of Pop is no longer among the living.

Talk about one of the most anticlimactic announcements ever.

I read an article in the Chicago Tribune (via TechCrunch) that claimed it was the stalwarts of media, like the Los Angeles Times, who did the "heavy lifting" and reported the news with the most accuracy.  I can only guess they were implying other sites' news be taken with a grain of salt.

While I do not dabble on the sites cited in the article, the Tribune's claim that other sites should not be trusted is basically unfounded and provides a clear explanation as to why newspapers are losing out: they refuse to identify these new forms of media as anything more than a passing fad. 

All it took was the death of a pop star to show us what they really thought.

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Brad

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26

06 2009


by Brad
posted in media
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  • Matt Seidl

    It was very surreal of the cable anchors to basically talk about MJ in the past tense while refusing to confirm his death. I think the Jeff Goldblum hoax provides a pretty good counterpoint though. If you only got your news from Twitter, you might still be convinced he’s gone.
    That’s what bothers me about new media: most folks just take aggregator headlines at face value, without clicking through to actually read the story and make up their own minds as to its veracity.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/bradmarley Brad

    The Jeff Goldblum example is a good one. On a site such as Twitter, where it’s like hundreds of people yelling you at the same time, you have to write something that will capture attention.
    Something else I thought of after I wrote this is that TMZ has less of a reputation, so they have less to lose if their rumor was untrue, whereas CNN has to be absolutely sure somebody is dead before they confirm it.