Out Scooping the News Wire Services
This article is apart of the Carnival of Journalism. This month it is hosted by Editor on the Verge, Yoni Greenbaum.
Of late I have been thinking about the future of news wire services. I think what makes them great is their ability to get a scoop and send reports on news items few other news organisations could hope to gather. However, I’ve been wondering how long this advantage will remain thanks to services like Twitter.
Now most of the stuff on twitter is noise. Random musings about the weather or some mundane event, but every now and then a story breaks. Just like the earthquake that happened in the north of England a few months back. Services are now being developed to parse out the noise from Twitter and present the news. Scoopler.com is the first that comes to mind and in the long term it could be in a position to out outscoop the news wire services. So what next?
Twitter does not make money and many of the services on top of Twitter seem unlikely to make money however, if Scoopler and others consider charging a subscription for this breaking information they could be on to a winner and in the meantime land a damaging blow to the news wire services industry.
3 comments
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Hi John,
It’s a good idea although I suspect that agencies will continue to be the first call for breaking stories because they can identify the big stories and which outlets will be most interested in them.
And even if other news alert systems evolve then the agencies will have a vital role in churning out all that data that we can all re-cycle so saving us the effort of duplicating information-gathering.
It’s the stuff that Nick ‘Flat Earth’ Davies hates, but the public wants and needs it.
Hey Charlie, you say wire services will be able to….
“identify the big stories and which outlets will be most interested in them. And even if other news alert systems evolve then the agencies will have a vital role in churning out all that data that we can all re-cycle”
I agree somewhat agencies will have the experience to know what’s hot and what’s not but it wont take too long for such services to cotton on and produce similar information. They will probably lack detail but will become the first port of call which is in itself valuable as they start to shape the news agenda. I recommend that the agencies get involved with this tech immediately.
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