Scandal, Sources and Speed

By now, the saga of John Chadima and his resignation at Wisconsin is old news. The events of Rose Bowl week are well over a month old and his departure was early last week. Having colleagues among the Badgers, I bring this up not to rehash, but to discuss two new media trends.

First, these are the type of events that move quickly, and these days virally. No be shock that Deadspin, SB Nation and the usual suspects will make hay with this.

But how it comes up in your search engine might surprise you. In the past, I've spent a lot of time talking about the brand strength of old line media versus the new. You will get news faster sometimes (albeit as at a risk), but you might not believe it until one of the old gray ladies "prints" it.

It was revealed that Google has been doing customization of your search -- even if you aren't logged in to one of their services -- for some time. They use local cached cookies of previous searches. Let that thought marinate for a minute, and you'll be clicking on that clear cache button pretty fast.

Here's my point and the question for my readers: google "John Chadima".

What are the top 10 news reports you get? I'm curious because of the potential that I'm seeing something very different from what you are. Are your sources:

Huffington Post
Deadspin
SB Nation
TheBigLead
DeKenversWordPress (a blog)
CBSChicago
Bleacher Report
NBC15.com
Wisconsin State Journal
CNN.com

If not, then because I work more in the new media, maybe that's why I see such a high proportion of the born digital.

If you do, point number deux: look at how few legacy media are in this list and consider is it that time has passed (about a week) and hits have driven the new media outlets to the top of the search list? Thus you really do need to think long term about what they are saying about your situations. A lot of folks spend their reputation time with the print media "because it lasts".

Maybe not.