Efficiency is a tough topic to tackle when it comes to discussion media organizations because you can’t quantify the work that goes into a big story or the results of regular beat reporting until after the fact, the metrics would never match up from journalist to journalist.
That being said, I’ve long had the position that one of the key things the “flattening” of the information load in markets that happened with the internet (all news sources listed side by side in Google News, for example) is that the flattening pointed out how incredibly inefficient journalists and the distribution channels are relative to the market size and amount of news out there.
Case in point: on Monday morning, take a look at the top 5 stories reported on your five favorite news sites and see 1) how many are the same and 2) how many are just reprinted from the AP.
The overlap of stories and the exponential reach of AP stories in each outlet isn’t that big of a deal. That’s going to happen because of the walled in nature of media institutions and consumers’ preferences for delivery.
But what’s really interesting is the number of news stories that are hidden (not in those top five anywhere and hard to find on news sites) and the fact that so many local news sites promote the news that everyone else in the market already has, not the news that sets them apart. It’s a weird sort of group think.
The alternative, in a particularly more efficient way, with real time news distribution and engagement is the potential to engage audiences while news is developed, reported, and crafted during the off peak/ non-publish times (6am, noon, 5pm, 6pm, 10pm).
It’s a tough transition for institutions and end consumers, going from peak times to real time. But think of this way: some magazine editors are in charge of a handful of pages of print every span of one month, some columnists are still only responsible for one column once or twice a week. That’s inefficient.
Compare that to someone who is updating (not to be confused with ‘teasing’) twitter or their blog once a day or several times a day on their beat or upcoming report and you’ll quickly see how efficiency can be a big deal.
