Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in “If the news is important, it will find me”

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

Jasonp107 — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:58:08 -0000

Absolutely true Mathew.

I've treated news as an "it will find me" enterprise for several years now, and while I'm sure I'm less informed than those who really do put the time in to read several newspapers every day, I also seem to get along just fine.

I think that newspapers, along with all other content-based business, are going to need to learn to rely on and enable the community filter to pass their content around. I wrote a post the other day about how the New York Times should take all their really cool interactive graphics and make them embeddable widgets the way youtube made video embeddable.

It's a little sad, because I think there's real value in having an editorial board come together at 5pm and decide what the public most needs to know (putting a limiter, essentially, on the public's sweet tooth for celebrity or sports news).

But the fact of the matter is that most people don't WANT those editors to be their filter anymore, and the tools are available for people to do otherwise. So adapt to that system, or lose out.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

mathewi — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:20:02 -0000

Thanks for the comment, Kevin -- that's a good way of putting it.

On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 2:16 AM, Disqus

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

kdonovan11 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:15:39 -0000

I'm a 19 year old, highly connected college kid and I would change that to:

If news is relevant, it may find me.

The important stuff, I have to seek out.

For example, just today a friend read me a funny passage from CNN.com about couples getting even with each other. It was not important, but it found me.

I still have to actively seek (via RSS subscriptions) what I know is important - political/economic news.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

mathewi — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:59:02 -0000

You might be right, Matt -- but I think the principle extends to text
messaging, IM and Facebook. And at least judging by my own research
using my teenaged daughters, that is how they get a lot of their news.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

Matt — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:52:45 -0000

In order for this to be true, people have to be immersed in networked (new) media.

We should be careful with the assumption that "young people" are immersed in new media and "old geezers" aren't.

I teach citizen journalism at a local university and I'd say less than 10% of them use these things regularly.

Blogs and microblogs are not a generational phenomenon - I think rather that they appeal to a certain personality type.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

mathewi — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:52:02 -0000

As I said on your post, I have to disagree with you, Joe.

Yes, the echo chamber is a real problem, and it's true that people are
often distracted by frivolous "news," but I still think the value of
social networking overcomes that. The friends I rely on to bring me
great links or bring things to my attention are (like me) interested
in a broad and diverse range of things, both deep and shallow, things
that I may not pay attention to -- and I like to think I serve the
same function for others in different ways.

That's what I mean by news finding me.

On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 8:41 PM, Disqus

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

JoeDuck — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:40:43 -0000

Matt after reflecting on this idea it really riled me. Online news via social networking is closer to just extending the wasteland than it is to news nirvana.
http://www.webguild.org/2008/03/important-news-...

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

mathewi — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:56:02 -0000

Thanks for the comment, Brian. I hope Mark (who is Canadian, by the
way) keeps that in mind now that he's in charge of NBC News' digital
operations.

On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 5:49 PM, Disqus

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

BrianReich — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:48:41 -0000

Tremendously important concept - that if the news is important, it will find me. I had this same quote in my book, Media Rules! -- I was talking to Mark Lukasciewicz from NBC News about a focus group that he did with young women regarding Nightly News.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

mathewi — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:56:49 -0000

I agree, Shafqat.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

shafqat — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:29:36 -0000

I think trust and credibility are two criterion that we had to take for granted before we had the distribution platform that we enjoy with the internet today. Now, news is filtered through by people we trust directly, or in the case of social news sites, by a community we can trust. While it doesn't always work, more often than not, we can get relevant news we trust, and very quickly. Unless traditional news organisations figure out a way to do the same, they will struggle.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

mathewi — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:19:04 -0000

I think they would likely be the same. But how does that contradict
what I described? I'm not saying that newspapers are going to be
obsolete -- just that the way people find the news is changing.

On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 4:10 PM, Disqus

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

JM — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:09:12 -0000

On Sept. 11, 2001, the news websites were jammed all day. At my office in downtown Toronto, we would call out to each other if someone actually got onto a news site, and people would gather around that monitor for information about the World Trade Center attacks. The next day I noticed that the corner newspaper boxes were ALL emptied (sold out) by midday. Would these things not be the case if it happened now? In five years?

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

vwtom — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:56:12 -0000

as it turns out that is really how del.icio.us and stumbleupon work too - "like minded" people suggest things for you to look at.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

n8k99 — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:00:35 -0000

perhaps the difficulty here is the confusion of the two terms 'knowledge' and 'news.'

News is a small group of facts, some of which may have a dubious quality to them, and geared towards relating a particular situation and/or analysis of the event.

Knowledge has more of a perspective of the event which can and usually does, have a greater perspective of the events, theory or accumulated group of facts as they fit into the landscape of the total wholeness.

Networking via people you trust, or will come to trust, is more active than the process of depending upon the process of depending upon the network of televisions and newspaper accounts. For as a participant in a network, the news you receive will only be as reliable as the news you transmit. This becomes a swap meet of information. You have ideas and observations which are not possible by another human being, strictly because you are you and no one else. You transmit these things and receive observations which others have as well.

Important news, such as major catastrophes, governmental declarations, and other such things were quickly passed through the word of mouth channels even before the advent of the internet. However with the development of social networks on the internet, this information travels in real time to a wide variety of people, who then pass it on to other people and therefore the news becomes filtered into its importance.

Importance is not something that has to be known right away. The knowledge of the events on 9/11/2001 is more important than the instantaneous absorption of the event itself. If someone did not know about it for a week or two, their life would not be significantly downgraded, if at all. and perhaps it would have even enhanced their life to not watch it over and over again on the passive networks(television)

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

Sebastian — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:11:35 -0000

It's a great approach, one that keeps my RSS feed list from exploding from 250 to 1000 – those blogs that have 1 good post in 20 I no longer subscribe to, that one good post will find me.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

chewbee — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:48:15 -0000

depends on how you define "important"

most kids define it as "what everyone else is talking about"

so, yes, "important" news will "find" you simply BECAUSE everyone else is talking about it

If you want to know about more than what's already on everyone's lips, you have to look for it yourself.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

ghiom — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 05:01:24 -0000

Sorry, I am not from the USA, perhaps it means I don't have the background to understand completely, but from what you say I understand that creating a network of relationships spares you the pain of seeking your own sources of information (news or knowledge, i think the distinction is irrelevant). This tends to promote a passive way of getting informed, and is therefore very dangerous : what I get from my network is not necessarily traceable, nor true (factually... as far as this word as any meaning). In that way of behaving towards information, I delegate the checking for relevance to others, who delegate it to others, who... This means I am even more vulnerable to gossips, hoaxes, or simply mistakes or misunderstood pieces of information. It is the dream of advertisers and public relation people.

Saying if info is important it'll find me is just like saying when i'm really hungry somebody will appear and give me a sandwich. It can be true if you have some good friends "watching your back", but if it does not happen in time it is deadly, and it is not reliable.

I take it just as a mistake in the sense of the implication. Passing to your network information that you think is important does not mean that you will receive the important information when you need it (the importance being relative to each node of the network). Believing so is just letting your network decide on what sould be important to you. This makes you vulnerable to manipulation.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

mathewi — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 03:23:01 -0000

Exactly, Natch -- excellent example :-)

On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 11:13 PM, Disqus

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

natch — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 03:12:33 -0000

Usually the news of an extremely wonderful, sexy, important, life-changing local conference reaches me on the day after the conference ends. And I go, oh, shit. Why can't the news about these things find me BEFORE they happen?

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

Boring Market — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 03:06:15 -0000

This blog post is proof that if news is that important it will find me. I found this blog through another site which choose to link to you and I would never find the NYT article if you didn't linked on it. Rather then the site I found it on link to the article, they linked to you. This is then essence of 'word of mouth' on the internet.

Genius.

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

mathewi — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 02:41:02 -0000

Mike, I would agree that this is not really something new -- and Brian
mentioned that in his NYT piece. What is happening (I would argue) is
that it's occurring a lot more, and a lot faster.

On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 10:35 PM, Disqus

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

Mike Kramlich — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 02:34:45 -0000

This was true a hundred years ago.

The more important, relevant or impacting a piece of news was, the more likely you would hear about it, and the sooner. Other factors effect it, like, the number and type of a persons contacts, as well as other factors. But otherwise, the essence was as true then as now.

I like to read the news too but I'd admit that most of it is like junk food.

Extremely important and urgent news, like "A large monster is approaching this city. Run for your lives!" will probably reach me right around when I need to know it. Would I like to know it as soon as possible, with as much advanced warning? Sure. That's another issue. But if it's important and relevant to me, it will find me or I will stumble on it. Or... it will stumble on me, as in: "Run for your lives! It's Gojira! Goj--" *squish*

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

mathewi — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:42:03 -0000

Thanks for proving my point, Louis :-) I think it's on Techmeme and
YCombinator's aggregator too, judging by my server logs.

On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 9:39 PM, Disqus

Re: “If the news is important, it will find me”

louismg — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:38:44 -0000

Mathew, it turns out that by sharing this item on Google Reader, those who subscribe to my feed, or my Friendfeed found it this way. That means it works!