TAKEAWAY: Slow down the news? Who would even think about it in the era of 24/7 breaking news and updates? Well, two students at London’s City University think it is the next best thing.
The issue of frequency continues to be one that fascinates—-and often confuses—editors.
It’s not easy to be an editor in the era of 24/7 news as it filters through the various platforms of the media quartet.
We in this blog often discuss frequency, most likely to cite that for editors of daily newspapers, the cycle runs from 5 a.m. to 5 a.m., while that of weeklies goes from Monday to Monday or whatever. In both cases, editors of these publications have to cope with the audience’s impatience and their desire for constant updates. I have mentioned that we throw raw meat at the audience with digital devices, waiting for the cooked steak to come later, if at all.
Now two students from London’s City University turn the frequency issue on its head, proposing a two week moratorium on publishing a story after a major news event “in order to present a fuller picture”.
No raw meat for these students, indeed. They claim that they “felt quite tired while reading the news. We were constantly ambushed by updates and sometimes we couldn’t make sense of what was going on. So we decided that we wanted to change that.”
Their project, called The Charta, is currently in the funding stage but planned for launch in September. Its premise: it will take two weeks to fully research and analyze the impact of a news event instead of rushing to publish a story before all the facts are known.
Citing such recent cases as last week’s reports of a plane crash off the coast of Gran Canaria – which turned out to be a tug boat – and initial reports on the disappearance of flight MH370 , the students claim that the media “have jumped the gun on reporting.”
“It’s supposed to allow us to give events time to unfold and avoid any possible inaccuracies that you get while you are, for instance, following a liveblog or Twitter feed around an event,” Carolina Are, The Charta’s co-founder and editor, told Journalism.co.uk.
My take:
Perhaps these last year students are on to something powerful here. Based on what we see when we sit in focus groups and/or talk to consumers of news, the opposite is true. We always hear that today’s readers/users want to know the minute something happens, and constantly return to their mobile devices to get updates and even corrections (we have witnessed this with the confusing and often contradictory coverage of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370). Raw meat is, indeed, a part of what we dispense to our audience today, knowing that eventually a more comprehensive and detailed analysis of a news event will be presented.
We know that heaven can wait, but can our readers? We will follow up with the students’ The Charta project with much curiosity.