Journalists should understand “Long Tails”
Posted on September 10th, 2006 by sherrilynne
Wired editor Chris Anderson gives an indepth interview to the Press Gazette’s Martin Stabe about how social media is changing the role of journalists, how news is used and valued and the future of publishing. I think it’s important information for PR professionals too. Some key points from the article:
- “When you consider that the newspaper presumption is a 12-hour half-life after which you’re down to zero, and the reality is now that it’s a 36-hour half-life with second half going off into perpetuity, that’s a very big shift towards long tail in time.”
- “The day that you could, as a media organisation, expect people to come to your home page, to navigate to news within your site, make you a part of their daily routine — that day is going.”
- “A lot of journalists have an arrogance about our profession that just does not reflect the reality of what people are reading right now.”
- “US journalism’s model of objectivity and evenhandedness and giving both sides of the story is, I believe, an artefact of the days of scarcity.”
Other Strive Notes about Wired that you might enjoy:
- Wired wiki experiment, where collaborative journalism is given a try
- Media Moves for 25 July 2006 where Wired‘s new GM appointment is featured
Filed under: public relations
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[...] Christ Anderson, editor of Wired and author of The Long Tail, talks about how the rise of social media is affecting journalism (thanks to Sherrilynne at Strive Notes for putting me on to this article). He covers a lot of ground, but I want to focus on his comments about objectivity in journalism: When there were only one or two newspapers in each town there was basically only one way to get information out there. And because they had this responsibility, as the sole provision of news, they needed to be as even-handed as possible, and be the fourth estate, the counterbalance to government. [...]