The speed of news
Yesterday, June 2, the day that Spain’s King Juan Carlos abdicated in favor of his son, Felipe, provided an excellent opportunity to look at the implications of how information is now transmitted and the way that the traditional media are adapting (or not) to new realities. In the early hours of the morning, a number of people began sending out tweets that Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was going to give a press conference about something important. Speculation began immediately; but it was veteran journalist José Antonio Zarzalejos, a former editor of pro-monarchy newspaper ABC, who, in an article in the El Confidencial newssite said that the press conference would be to announce the King’s abdication.
Needless to say, there was probably much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth at ABC, that bastion of royal sentiment and support…
By the time Mariano Rajoy made the announcement, the news was already being discussed on the twittersphere as well as in many a bar over morning coffee. From a Twitter perspective, Rajoy’s announcement was only of interest as regards his choice of words and the tone of voice he used.
Meanwhile, what did the country’s main newspapers do? They rushed out a special afternoon edition. Presumably so we could buy them as souvenirs, because there was certainly nothing in them that we didn’t already know. At the same time, the country’s media began working on their SEO strategies. Too late: information about the abdication wasn’t moving at headline or search engine speed; it was cracking ahead at warp hashtag velocity.
One really has to wonder what is going on in the minds of our country’s newspaper editors if they think that there is any value in producing a special edition about a story that by the time it goes on sale we will all have read and discussed from just about every angle possible. Do they really think that we are going add this to our collection dating back to Victory in Europe Day so we can show them to our grandchildren? Or perhaps they were hoping that some Neanderthal might have ventured out of her cave and, passing by a newsstand, would throw their hands up and say: “Woah, look at that, the King has abdicated!”
The fact that an online newspaper, El Confidencial, which has successfully carved a niche for itself within the decrepit monolith that is Spanish journalism, should have broken the story ought to make our country’s editors and newspaper owners pause for thought.
What added value are they generating when an old-fashioned newsman like Zarzalejo decides he would rather take his scoop to a so-called “new era” publication (although of course El Confidencial has been around since 2001), rather than one of the pillars of this country’s press?
These guys need to be asking themselves what they are doing, when, despite considering themselves the best informed, they didn’t get that scoop, and when discussion on the abdication is not taking place on their threads, but on Twitter and an online newssite. Which raises the matter of how these traditional publications see the future of the internet and their place on it: charging news aggregators for sending readers to their websites and offering their services to the government of the day in return for their failure to adapt to new realities.
The moral of the story is all too clear: if you want to know what is going on, turn to Twitter, read digital media… but forget about publications that still think in terms of paper, that medium requiring printing and transportation in lorries; in other words at a speed that offers no value proposal in today’s world.
We’re not talking here about minutes or hours; it’s about moving with the times. To recap: if you want to be informed, forget about the newsstand, just put your hand in your pocket and take out your phone.
(En español, aquí)
