Who's news

When I think of reporters, I always think of slightly broken people living in cars full of rubbish as they hunt down 'the truth' – part gumshoe, part paragon of honour. People that go in search of a story, uncover something and then come back and say, “Look...”.

It doesn't work like that now, though. Most information is trafficked through the internet. By the time the traditional hack has got their notebook out, whatever they've found has gone global. It should be a good thing and it is, really. Everything is  available to all. The whole world knowing exactly what's going on. But the hit-chasing nature of the internet worries me a little. I've noticed loads of plane crash stories at the moment – partly because planes are crashing but also because, in the light of the Hudson River incident, Planes going down are pretty hot right now on Google. That means crashes that wouldn't get attention any other time rise up the ranks and get noticed. A few weeks time, maybe not so much.

That's all good and true because what the public want, the public gets. But how will that affect news organisations as their websites – and so the portal to the world for most people – become more and more important. Obviously vital issues will always be up there: the politics, wars and so on. But people notoriously live in denial and have short attention spans. Will companies like the BBC or Reuters champion stories that don't rate highly in the search engines, or go for the fast traffic? Not to forget of course that the general populous are easily pleased with gossip and stories about shiny things. The placated, ignorant masses so popular in near future sci-fi could end up being a  self imposed destiny rather than an unscrupulous higher power trying to control information.