Slow News Days, R.I.P.?

I'm beginning to think that the very notion of the Slow News Day was due to the limitations (real or imagined) set by our then-current media. Certainly something newsworthy isn't always happening in your neck of the woods, but quite frankly I identify with lots of forests now.  So much so that when even the most major of U.S. news networks have spats between politicians and late-night comedians as a constantly-running headline story, what happens a world away can take over our day despite our media's best efforts to be fair-to-middling.

As always, I am hesitant to say that any major cultural shift that includes (or is enabled by) new media is tied to any one service as much as it is by a people-powered concept.  The importance of the #iranelection movement on Twitter says more about the concept and the lack of coverage of the major media networks than it does about Twitter as a company itself (not that they don't deserve the credit and attention they received for delaying upgrades and even talking to the U.S. State Department). The fact that Twitter itself became a story on the major news networks only served to emphasize their lateness to the party.  The important takeaway outside of the political impact is that activism can translate online, even in intimate and short bursts.  In fact, it might be because it was in short bursts enabled by mobile technology and ease of broadcasting and re-broadcasting (re-Tweets, sharing) that it had such an impact from a young woman on a street in Iran to one in Oklahoma City.

I'm trying to be kind here and not be terribly demonizing of our traditional media, but they don't make it easy to ignore.  When The Washington Post covers (brilliantly I might add) the recent Metro crash, the importance of an empowered press is demonstrated.  However that same news organization did not send out an email news alert for the colliding trains, and yet less than 12 hours later they quickly email everyone that an octogenarian comedian had died.  Even with that misplaced speed, how did I learn of both the metro crash and Ed McMahon's death? I saw status updates on Facebook and tweets on Twitter, of course. I didn't learn all of the details, but the cues were there, spurning me on to take quick searches to verify, clarify and expound on what little I knew.

And for a handful of generations often accused of not being well-informed, we seem to be doing pretty well following news rabbit-trails.  We just aren't waiting to be told what trails to follow.

-Dean