Teaming Up: Jarvis and Sullivan

One idea found among Jarvis's text and diagrams about the spread of news is that in times passed, the process (of gathering news) lead to the product (the packaged story). Nowadays however, Jarvis says that the process is the product. In other words, news today can no longer be packaged, distributed, and then ingested - at least not just once. After we find the news, or perhaps after it finds us, we don't just forget about it and move on; we continue to circulate the story. We talk about it with our peers, family, and friends, we search for background information, and we read about it from various sources, among other things. All the while, more and more facts and pieces of information are added to the story, making it fuller - or more substantial. Picture making a snowball: as you push your tiny lump of snow across the yard, it will get bigger, denser, and more compact until of course, you stop pushing it. A news story works the same way.

This idea of news being continuous and being found within the actual process of forming/finding news is exactly the idea Sullivan wrote about in his article, "Why I Blog." It is also, coincidentally, a large reason why blogs have become so popular. Blogging, which seems to be Sullivan's forte, is possibly the best example of Jarvis's new press-sphere. A blog contains and allows for the interaction between peers, other sources, government, and the media via online discussion and the incorporation of links. Sullivan directly addresses the continuity of news within a blog by acknowledging that "if it stops moving, it dies." I think it's safe to say that Sullivan and Hedges are arguing the same ideas.

For the most part, I'd say that I agree with the idea of news being in continuous circulation and therefore always growing and changing. This is (or seems) true for big pieces of news, but I will have to argue that it is not so true for the smaller or more trivial pieces of news. For example, I recently read an article from The New York Times website about how humans are built to run. It pointed out many of the anatomical characteristics that make humans, in general, successful runners. While I found this article to be rather interesting, I still haven't heard anyone else talking about it, heard about it on the news, or read any similar articles anywhere else. So, in this case, I ingested the news and its' process ended. Other, much larger stories though, such as the war in Iraq, have been ingested time and time again because everyone has heard and is talking about it, hearing about it, or reading about it.