News Just Gets Faster

Sitting in a pew in St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street at a Memorial Service for an old friend there was time to reflect on how the media has changed.

On the walls of this London church are countless memorials with “journalist”, “printer” or “publicist” proudly displayed alongside the names of those – both well known and not so well known who have brought news to people.

As I sat in a pew proudly displaying an OK! Magazine logo I remembered how Fleet Street used to be the heart of journalism. This month saw the 97th anniversary of the Titanic and it was from offices just yards from where I sat that writers first broke the news of this momentous event to the shocked nation – days after the ship had hit the ice-berg.

Many of those news reports told how lives had been saved because of the Marconi wireless system installed on the Titanic, which alerted others to its plight. Little did they know that they were reporting on a development that would revolutionise their own industry.

By the time of the events of 9/11 in New York the media had changed so fast that the second plane hitting the second tower was viewed live on television and computer screens across the world – it was just 17 minutes after the first plane had struck.

Our means of receiving news is getting slicker and slicker, which means it travels faster and faster. There is little time for a journalist to consider their words; no time for the printer to present the article beautifully and the publicist has to be ever faster with an answer or an idea.

Back at the Empica office a story we had released on plans to hold a Titanic Memorial Cruise in 2012 was attracting national and international interest. Within a few hours a national newspaper in Norway was on the telephone to me wanting quotes – they had read our press release on-line.

Hits on the cruise website showed that people from 84 countries had not only read the story but had then gone to the trouble of looking up more information on the website. The press release had circled the globe in hours.

Fast reactions are required frequently if you are to engage with the media. But buying time can be more precious if you are to make the right call and present a story with clarity and quality. Time is a resource that gets rarer every day. We need to use it wisely.