Tuesday, October 07, 2008

really really obsolete newspapers

so the current financial turmoil shows how pathetically obsolete printed newspapers are - the rate of change of circumstance is so far adrift from the 24 hour cyclic report/print latency, that it really looks daft to spend so many resources on so much
out of date rubbish - of course, we already new most the news is just a re-hash of wht is sent out by industry and government marketing departments (see the Flat Earth News
book for details of statistical studies of the percentage of actual "fresh" journalism present in a typical daily)....but the situation in the last few days makes even the editorial aspect of the "posher" papers ludicrously outdated.

1 comment:

mrry said...

That's true, although the "up-to-date" online news sources are scarcely an improvement. As the FTSE continued its rollercoaster today, the same story on the Guardian was reported with the headline (I'm paraphrasing):

* FTSE rallies in early-day trading
* Early-day gains wiped out as banking stocks plunge
* FTSE back to the price it was at opening, roughly

By the time each of these was reported, of course, the situation had changed again. And anyway, all of this was patently obvious from a look at Google Finance, and a lot closer to real-time. Perhaps it's human journalists who are obsolete?