via Monday Note: (a Medium blog)
The first part of this tragic developing story involves endless updates on the aftermath of the crash: mourning the victims, circumstances, causes (largely unknown in the first 24 hours of the incident), speculative comments from legions of experts hastily lifted from oblivion.
Important as they might be, these are typical commodity news items: every outlet across the country gets the same stream roughly at the same time. Quality (taken in the traditional journalistic sense) is so-so because rumors tend to flare without much thoughtful fact-checking; everyone is in the same boat. The economic value is near zero. It can even be nil altogether as some news organizations chose to forgo advertising in the case of tragic events — advertisers don’t like that sort of juxtaposition anyway.
As the news cycle unfolds, things change. At least in theory.
In every large newsroom of the country, reporters on the transportation beat will move heaven and earth to squeeze their sources in the airlines sector, especially at the National Transportation Safety Board in charge of the post-crash investigation. At this stage, the notion of exclusivity sets in: if a reporter gets her hands on a flight-recorder transcript, the story will score high in terms of economic value. In theory. In fact, due to the structure of a traditional website and the way ads are sold, this scoop is unlikely to carry a higher value than yet another third-hand Kim Kardashian robbed in Paris “report”.
This is why I don’t read any sites that publish breaking news. I had a friend in SF that worked from home and had CNN on from 5AM to midnight. Can you imagine? No actual reporting of the truth just a stream of questions and small answers all day long with a lot of commercial breaks.