“Aged News” vs. #IranElection

Everyone, including myself, is talking about the stark difference between the mainstream media’s reporting on events in Iran versus the real-time feed of citizens reporting on events via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and FlickR, among others.

Clearly, we are reaching a tipping point, a time after which newspapers will simply not have a significant role to play in the reporting of the news.  Sure, we will always be interested in reading well-written commentary and longer, in-depth explorations of complex topics, but the idea of the newspaper as a place for actual news is becoming laughable.

As I mentioned the other day, my favorite part of the Daily Show takedown of the New York Times was when Jason Jones called said the paper was full of “aged news.” It looks like the term is catching on:

The speed of change is leaving newspapers dead in the water. While some like the Guardian have managed to maintain active blogs on the events unfolding, most seem unable to compete with realtime speed, what use is their aged news when we can’t use it today?  LINK

Oh Noes, They’re ALL Pirates!

According to the GuardianUK:

“More than half of young people copy the songs on their hard drives to friends and even more swap CD copies, according to research that reveals the huge challenge home copying poses to a music industry already battling internet file-sharing.”

AND

“Overall, 95% of the 1,158 people surveyed had engaged in some form of copying, including taking the music contents of a friend’s hard drive – 58% – and the more old-fashioned method of recording from the radio.”

Of course, this is causing the established record industry to call for tougher laws, more policing, bigger fines all in hopes of getting things back to the way they were…which is absolutely bat-shit crazy.  That’s like stirring your cream back out of your coffee.  It just isn’t going to happen.

Recording execs must feel a bit like the Stone-Age workers in this excellent skit from That Mitchell and Webb Look:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpeqPdVyQd0&hl=en]