Somedays, The Media Really Doesn't Matter

Not that those with this blog would be surprised, but raw source media is growing by leaps and bounds, and of course that is driving the citizen media. Today's lesson involves the speed of bad news.

A huge storm rolls through Fayetteville this AM -- which has me up at 6 trying to protect my wife's garage sale displays from the storm. Come inside and while checking radar scans and killing time, I do my usual morning survey of the MSM, blogs and boards.

The notice of an arrest of an athlete catches my eye, so I go to check the thread. We are a county where the jail intake -- read bookings -- are posted on the sheriff's website. Media watch it, but so do citizen media. Check this timeline:

Booking: 3:19 am
First posting: 4:32 am

That's scary enough, but its a Saturday and one can reasonably expect the regular media won't take this up until the Sunday papers, maybe the 10 pm news tonight. I get the expected calls from colleagues that also monitor new media, and it's made those rounds by noon.

Here's the kicker, late afternoon after the garage sale -- about 4 p.m. -- I'm at the checkout of the local natural foods store picking up some turbino sugar (and if you like coffee, let me tell you there is absolutely no finer sugar for your java). Young guy, I'll guess 20 at the outside, notices my hat and begins to make chit-chat about athletics. Mentions an injury that was in the paper this morning. Then he hits me with the whopper.

"So, how about (athlete) getting arrested this morning."

Parce it: This is the checker at the health food store. Not exactly a sports talk/message board environment. He's asking me about an incident that at this time is about 12 hours old, that has not been in any media, on any call-in show, on any sportscast because on Saturday in this town there aren't ANY of these until the evening.

How did he know? Maybe co-workers chatting (I doubt), maybe friends during the day (better), maybe he's also a fan of the county sheriff website (also doubtful). I didn't ask, because I didn't want to prolong or draw attention to the athlete's misfortune -- move along, nothing to see here, move along -- but the most likely source of his news: one of the four or five major Razorback boards which were doing dot-com stock traffic business on the info.

All and all, it's just another brick in the wall.