What Constitutes Breaking News in the Era of the Apple Watch?

It was the week of the first GOP Primary Presidential Debate, and it was also the week of The Donald, as in Donald Trump, who managed to stick his head out through every news cycle, making more outrageous statements as he tried to explain the previous outrageous statement. I, for one, have grown tired of The Donald, never watched The Apprentice, and wish that pundits on CNN and elsewhere will stop simplifying things by stating that "Trump is Trump". Not really, folks, this Trump wants to be President.

And now his statements have managed to become Breaking News. Yes, here is the sample from CNN. The Donald is a presence, a beep on my Apple Watch, my Phone and everywhere else where alerts exist to tell me that something relevant has happened. The Trump outbursts do not quality, and I am sure I am not the only owner of a wearable and/or mobile device who resents alerts that should not be there at all.

Is CNN taking a step back? We were thrilled in December 2013 when the new CNN boss, Jeff Zucker, announced his plan to take the news network in different directions, and, in his own words:

“We’re all regurgitating the same information. I want people to say, ‘You know what? That was interesting. I hadn’t thought of that. The goal for the next six months, is that we need more shows and less newscasts.”

Does not seem as if this philosophy applies anymore, or perhaps the emergence of Donald Trump as politico has changed priorities at the network.

In one of the first journalism textbooks, Newswriting (1917), author Lyle Spencer, wrote a definition of news that many journalism students have learned during their first week of class:

Any accurate fact that will interest
a large number of readers, and, of two stories, the accurate one that
interests the greater number of people is the better one…..

While that definition may still work at some levels, I think a more apt definition for 2015 is:

Anything you know now that you did not know 15 minutes ago….or
15 seconds ago

But with that change of frequency changing so drastically also comes a responsibility on the part of editors curating stories as to what constitutes Breaking News of the Interruption Kind (BNIK). Not an easy task, since I am aware that what may merit an alert for me on my wrist via the Apple Watch might not be of interest to ten other users. Common sense should prevail.

I insist that Donald Trump's now daily offensive remarks do not constitute Breaking News of the Interrupting Kind.