Full marks to Buzzfeed for identifying the key point amid today’s information blizzard from Boston (and for keeping their heads while all around them are losing theirs):
Yesterday, the conspiracy nuts at Infowars and the proud tabloid hacks at the New York Post, the amateur sleuths on Reddit and and the top-notch journalists at CNN shared something: They each failed to understand their new roles in a radically changed news environment.
The traditional journalists ignored the reality that their audiences were swimming in information, good and bad, and weren’t waiting for anyone’s permission to share it. The Redditors didn’t realize that as many people were looking at their wild, superficially compelling speculations as at John King’s. (The leader of Reddit’s bombing investigation told BuzzFeed yesterday, in complete seriousness: “Things shouldn’t be going any further than this forum and the FBI.”)
The shift here is, basically, from the media having one major responsibility — finding, vetting, and sharing new information — to having another one: guiding an audience that has already been exposed to much more.
The job of a news organization — and of a citizen — has changed with frightening speed in a world where information is everywhere; where the tip line is public; where the distinction between source, subject, and publisher has blurred; and where, crucially, questionable reports and anonymous postings are part of the fabric of that story.
