The Death of the News Story

This morning when I opened my Facebook, I noticed a few things right away:

1) All the hype about the Pats & "Deflategate" really needs to stop. Like, now. They're cheaters, we know. Get over it. Does Sports Il really have nothing better to report on? 

2) I have 8 event invites - for a few seconds, I feel popular....

3) Then I am distracted by the news headlines on the right side of the screen, telling me what's currently trending. Namely, I take notice of the Aaron Rodgers headline, since I am a Packers fan. I hover over the title, and find he has won Celebrity Jeopardy, earning $50,000 for the MACC fund (which, if you don't know about it, is an amazing organization - you can learn more about it here)

Now, the coolest part of this all is that not only did I get to see something about the QB of my favorite team, but I also got to see exactly what the article was about by hovering over it with my mouse. Nowadays, if the entirety of the information of the article isn't already in the title, it's usually always in the first few lines. And after that, people stop reading. If we can get what we need to by doing as little as possible (sound familiar - my last google blog?) then we're going to do it - that's just how our generation is.

Apart from the fact that I can find out the news, or rather what's "trending" as soon as I sign into facebook, what's really great is the fact that what's trending for me, might not be the same as everyone else. And while that may not sound great (actually it sounds kind of terrifying, that everyone is getting different news) it is truly great. Because while the Malaysia Arline Flight and Amtrak stories are probably on most of my friends' newsfeeds, the Aaron Rodgers story might not be, and that's due largely in part to two things:

• The fact that we live outside of Chicago, where Bears fans couldn't care less about whether or not ARod won Celebrity Jeopardy

and

• The fact that I am an avid Packers fan, as is obvious by my likes of the Packers FB page, and the Aaron Rodger's FB fan page

So why do these two things affect what I see in my news feed, versus what my friends see? Because, since we live in relatively the same area, we would (theoretically) be getting the same news headlines - except for the fact that I'm from Wisconsin and have liked Packers pages, which Facebook knows, and takes into consideration. Because of my likes, Facebook is able to determine which headlines I would most likely want to see, similar to how Google tries to tailor the results it gives you based off of you past searches, and a variety of other factors. So the reason I say that the news story is dead is because of these combination of factors; the fact that the headline has basically become made to tell the whole story in under ten words, as well as the fact that instead of clicking on the article to learn more (because clicking on an article to actually read it is soo tedious) you can hover over it, and get a few lines of synopsis. It's crazy how simple things have become. Even if a person wants to know the entirety of an article,they're still far more likely to just read the headline and/or synopsis and go on with their day.

Apart from that, the fact that my news is "tailored" to me also skews the concept of a new story. Yes, while what appears in my trending stories are things I usually want to know, that doesn't change the fact that what I'm reading may not always be what would be considered the most "newsworthy". And while large-impact or more well-known events (things such as earthquakes, the riots in Baltimore, the Deflategate scandal, etc.) are almost always shown no matter what, it still skews the lower-scale news that I'm getting, as opposed to my friends. There are times when I'll ask if they saw something trending on their Facebook, and they have no idea what I'm talking about, because occasionally we'll get different trends - and thank God they use the word "trends" instead of "news" because if I were to say the phrase "my friends and I are getting separate news from the internet" that would be a slightly scary thought; but calling them trends makes it seem like just another inevitable part of our "progressive" society. Progressive... riight. God help us all.

Stay trendy, my friends;

- Robyn