Content Collapses

Last week a tragic attack happened in Luik, Belgium. A guy threw grenades and opened fire on innocent people waiting for the bus, killing 3 people and himself. Since Belgian news was almost ‘proud’ to announce it was world news and ‘trending’ (suitable word, don’t you think?) on Twitter even when it was still happening at the moment, I doubt you don’t have heard of it.

We live in an amazing age where the speed of information is almost faster than the speed of light. You read immediately who died (Steve Jobs, Christopher Hichens, Kim Jong-II … to sum some recent names), which country went from one minute to the other bankrupt or simply ‘what happened in the world 15 minutes ago’. It’s amazing. The world has never been so well connected and the advantages that come along are utterly brilliant.

But there are also some disadvantages (aren’t there always?). It was annoying me last week when I was trying to follow what was happening in my country on the other side of the world. I was of course happy I could follow immediately and take notice of the events that took place through the online version of a Belgian quality newspaper and through Twitter #luik or #liege. But what was pissing me off, was the fact how I realized how journalists and people (but I actually only need to attack journalists since it’s their profession to bring facts onto the table) were spreading news facts about the event constantly without having any verification or proof. First, there were multiple ‘gangsters’, I even saw the word ‘terrorists’ appearing one time. Then, there were at least 6 people dead (or another number, I don’t know anymore but you get my point). Then, police were still chasing criminals in the streets with open gunfire. Still today I wonder where the hell they got that information? And if it was true, who the fuck were the police shooting at?

On the one hand, it’s amazing I’m being notified and updated by what is happening exactly on that moment somewhere else on the globe; on the other hand I have the feeling news becomes cheap. The speed of delivering news is dominating the quality. In fact, news has become cheap already. Actually, it’s free. I don’t pay anything to read that news site yet have all the knowledge of the world right at my desk. I guess it’s my own fault. It’s our fault. We are still in the illusion that digital content should be absolutely free.

And there lies our biggest mistake. The biggest mistake we made at the beginning of the dotcom-revolution and actually something we need to blame Google for, despite how much I respect them. We have been growing up with the idea that everything we find coming from the World Wide Web has to be free since we “already pay for our monthly internet subscription”. It’s a mindset that will take a while before it can change. Will it ever?

Newspapers all over the world are struggling and sales are decreasing while the costumer is still expecting quality news and journalism. Steve Jobs in an interview had a pretty positive view on the future on that. In the sense that we are going to an era where there will be more multi-functional devices for people to read, view and share content on constantly around them and that should be a good thing for a company that produces content. The only problem we’re facing right now is that those shifts once in while can take some time and so we’re now at a shifting point in history. We definitely are. Not sure how we are going to solve this problem and try to close the gab that is widening constantly through (micro-)blogging and SNS but I do hope we won’t get lost in a world of journalism where speed reigns and where quality, proof & facts and honest reports get behind.