Snappy sloppy news

Online media have surrendered to speed. I found this interesting disclaimer at the website of CBS, Denver, Colorado.

“In the interest of timeliness, this story is fed directly from the newswire and may contain occasional typographical errors.”

Speed has become so vital for online media that they want readers to prepare to find flaws and sloppy spelling. Their message is that we are in such a hurry to inform you about the results of this friendly basketball game between Sweden and China that we don’t have time to proof read properly. You readers deal with it.

I don’t think that we need to accept that. Media consumers today already know that time is essential in breaking news and that it sometimes leads to mistakes, but we would at least want to believe that they are trying to deliver a product without glitches. Nick Denton of Gawker et al once said that for blogs “immedeacy is more important than accuracy“. The same is increasingly true for online media.