"Awash in data, if not necessarily in knowledge"

Much has been written about the 24-hour news cycle, and how it dilutes pertinent stories with less important but flashier stories. James Poniewozik, a writer for Time Magazine, recently wrote about the 24 minute news cycle. In other words, he believes that with cable and online outlets, any little thing can be made into news, to help fill the time and to satiate the the voracious appetites of some news consumers.

The phenomenon he describes is that the coverage we see is actually "fixations and miniscandals whipped up in the unsleeping" media. He believes that potential stories "percolate" in blogs and tabloids until the mainstream press finally pick them up to join in the conversation and in the process "soil" their white gloves.

Poniewozik illustrated his point with the recent election coverage as an example. He believes it was just a succession of these miniscandals, hyped because "the media run so fast while politics moves so slow."

Example 1: "While Hillary Clinton and Obama won their expected states with the precision of a German train schedule, the 24-minute news cycle played each victory as: Comeback! Counter-comeback! Counter-counter-comeback!"

Example 2: "The campaigns, meanwhile, also learned to use new media to keep the news monster appeased. Web ads were quick, cheap and explosive--the more outrageous, the more likely to get embedded on blogs and played for free on the news."

In the end, Poniewozik believes that the mainstream press has more competition for scoops and thus for audiences (from blogs, YouTube, etc), so they learned how to "put on a show," turning the 2008 election into the "biggest pop culture event of the year."