Two initial thoughts. First is about the saying the when you drive, you’re not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. Nowadays, for the big outlets especially, you’re not reporting the news, you are the news. At least in some ways and contexts. Things become news because you report them. This is hardly a new thought, it’s been on this site for over 13 years, but it helps me to connect it to something I already have a short adage for.
Second, one part of my job involves analysis of news in a specific range of technical fields. Basically, to condense the news into a less-stupid version so others can get something useful out of it, even if that’s just “You can safely ignore this and anything that looks like this.”. With so many places re-posting identical press releases, it can be remarkably hard to find anything I could call an original source for any announcement. It’s in each outlet’s interest to make you want to go back to them instead of somewhere else, I get that, but it makes it more difficult to follow a story, or connect it to any other piece of information on the same topic.
Two initial thoughts. First is about the saying the when you drive, you’re not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. Nowadays, for the big outlets especially, you’re not reporting the news, you are the news. At least in some ways and contexts. Things become news because you report them. This is hardly a new thought, it’s been on this site for over 13 years, but it helps me to connect it to something I already have a short adage for.
Second, one part of my job involves analysis of news in a specific range of technical fields. Basically, to condense the news into a less-stupid version so others can get something useful out of it, even if that’s just “You can safely ignore this and anything that looks like this.”. With so many places re-posting identical press releases, it can be remarkably hard to find anything I could call an original source for any announcement. It’s in each outlet’s interest to make you want to go back to them instead of somewhere else, I get that, but it makes it more difficult to follow a story, or connect it to any other piece of information on the same topic.