The Evolution of News Across an Age of Digital Disruption
Jerry Seinfeld, a well-known comedian, once said:
“It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper”
Today, not so much...
News publications are now challenged by quite the opposite, their struggle is actually being able to cover just a small fraction of everything out there. The main priority now is tailoring reporting based on what your audience wants to read. So, although many complained about how much Kim Kardashian’s armed robbery was reported, it’s only because that’s what people were going online to see. We control much more of the media than some might think. The power of the press is no longer restricted to newspapers and the television, nowadays if you own a tech device with the internet, you own the way news is shared across the world too. There is a pattern emerging where if one broadcasting platform takes off, the others can’t keep up. First, papers were largely replaced by television and now, television is taking a backseat against digital platforms. The internet is upsetting our normal routine for receiving and sharing the news.
On Monday the 19th of September, an emergency alert dominated the phones of thousands of people walking the streets of New York City. An unnerving notification but one with colossal potential. The message read ‘WANTED: Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28-yr-old male. See media for pic. Call 9-1-1 if seen’. The nation’s emergency alert system was effectively deployed as a ‘wanted’ poster, looking to identify a bombing suspect in the area. News like this is typically first aired on the television and we don’t expect to see notifications like this, so it’s no surprise people felt unsafe. This is a powerful example of digital disruption across the news industry. Question is, would Ahmed have been caught otherwise? In the UK, TV channels like ITV and Channel 4 can’t charge as much for advertising anymore because they are competing with free online channels. To put this into perspective, in the US more users watched college football on Snapchat than watched the events on TV. Yet, according to the Wall Street Journal, companies spent $1 billion on college football national TV ads. Next year, will they spend that $1 billion with TV, or Snapchat? This is digital disruption in action.
Because of the geographical data, the emergency services had they were able to pass this news around New York with great speed. Sadly, the live reporting on the television is even too slow now. Digital apps such as Snapchat are actually providing a massive threat to channels such as Google, Facebook and the TV. An article in the Business Insider states that over 24.79 million people watched the New York City Blizzard in 2015. That’s over 3 times as many people that watched the Game of Thrones finale…
Times are changing.