journalism

The reason for the change is that articles are no longer written only for the newspaper. Breaking news is posted immediately on the Globe’s websites; stories are then fleshed out, posted again, then put into the process for the next day’s paper and the next day’s web entries. With all that traffic, a reliance on “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow” is an invitation for error.

While it’s tempting to see the Huffington Post’s Pulitzer as a “big win for new media,” or something like that, the real story is that these organizations — the Huffington Post, the New York Times, the Washington Post — are becoming more like each other. Old media and new media are increasingly antiquated terms.

The way I see it, If I can spend 20 minutes in the morning and have a 90 percent chance of knowing anything important that someone might mention that day, I’m informed. A person mentioning news that I didn’t know about, that is relevant to me, is a failure in my newsreading methods.

Our response to date as an industry has been as equally inefficient and in many cases emotional. “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone” is not much of a business model.

But when it comes to the verdict, surely the reporter should rush to the live microphone or camera first — even if that means being beaten by a rival tweeter?

I think in three-five years, we will have more fully developed language to describe different types of aggregation, and that language will lead to a better relationship between aggregators and their sources, as well as more transparency for the audience. But until then we will keep muddling through.