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Friday, June 26, 2009
The day online news took over
We expect the Internet to get it first — its currency is expediency.
But we don’t expect online news to get it so bluntly, finally right.
At about 4:22 p.m. Central time, TMZ.com sent out an e-mail alert headlined, “Michael Jackson Dies.” In the body of the message, next to a blurry photo of sunglasses-wearing Jackson, the message began, “We’ve just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50.”
Within moments, TMZ’s Web site was crushed with traffic and the news spread like wildfire on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. Meanwhile, CNN, the Los Angeles Times and other news sources appeared flat-footed as they continued to report only that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital. For almost another hour, they repeated reports that Jackson was in a coma (which later proved untrue), but not dead. The speed of messages on Twitter, already alight with “RIP” messages to Farrah Fawcett sped up as debate raged about whether TMZ’s report could be trusted.
Turned out they were right. As usual.
Whatever people think about TMZ’s reporting methods (they are as known for their sleazy, late-night mini-cam celebrity stalking than for their news reporting), the Time Warner-owned celebrity site owns Hollywood news. Yesterday’s scoop, which follows a series of accurate breaking news reports from the news organization (Anna Nicole Smith’s and Heath Ledger’s deaths among them), was only acknowledged by CNN and other more-respected news organizations after the Los Angeles Times echoed the news of Jackson’s death. (Which occurred about 20 minutes before TMZ reported it, according to a Friday story from the Times.)
In an embarrassing sort-of admission of dropping the ball, CNN later interviewed a TMZ editor on camera nearly two hours after TMZ.com had broken the news. It was only that CNN began to acknowledge that the King of Pop was dead. TMZ, it seemed, was suddenly news royalty (at least for entertainment news) after years of playing court jester in the eyes of mainstream media. CNN, whose cable news coverage still seemed to vital and relevant during the 2008 election season, was painful to watch Thursday afternoon. It didn’t help that the news network had recently been criticized for ignoring Iran election news while posters on Twitter lit up the site with updates, photos and video when protests began. A popular tag on Twitter in mid-June was, “#CNNfail.”
It was a make-or-break moment for TMZ: reporting the death inaccurately in such a high-profile would have ruined the news organization’s credibility. Instead, it cemented TMZ’s position as the preeminent quicksilver Hollywood fount of news. Only the death of Walter Cronkite, who has been in poor health this week, might have been a clearer signal that the torch for breaking-news coverage had been passed from cable news to scrappy online news sites. The 24-hour news cycle may now be closer to 24 minutes.
How does TMZ do it? They are well-sourced, tenacious and, in some cases, pay for content. In an interview with Playboy magazine (possibly not-safe-for-work), Harvey Levin, the lawyer who is managing editor of TMZ.com, said, “… roadblocks don’t stop us… In certain cases we pay. Newspeople get on their high horse and say they don’t pay sources. That’s (expletive).”
TMZ.com broke a record in unique visitors to the site, a 33 percent increase over its previous record, the organization said on Friday in an e-mail. When asked by the American-Statesman, TMZ would not release the number of actual visitors on Thursday nor what the previous record-making event had been.
TMZ’s news gathering efforts were passed along in part by a flood of messages on social networking sites that strained network traffic, as CNN.com would later say in a story headlined, “Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him.”
That surge of activity was fueled by the usual suspects engaged in their usual behavior: the gullible spread of rumors about Jeff Goldblum’s death (not true), which originated on a prank site. Gossip lightning rod Perez Hilton outraged the world, again, by reporting early on that Jackson might be faking his own illness.
And on Twitter, the Tweenut gallery chimed in with everything from snarky jokes about Jackson’s troubled history to heartfelt tributes for the singer to links for songs and videos performed by Michael Jackson on YouTube, blip.fm and iTunes. On Apple’s music site, six of the top 10 downloads were by Jackson by Friday afternoon. Amazon, Inc. and Barnes & Noble, Inc. both reported selling out of some Michael Jackson items after seeing unprecedented demand, the Associated Press reported. Bill Carr, Amazon’s vice president of music and video, called it, “Stunning.”
In an ugly bit of social media zaniness, Jackson first appeared on the list of Twitter’s trending topics as the misspelled, “Micheal Jackson.” Apparently, enough people reposted a Tweet from the very popular “BreakingNews” Twitter account that the misspelling stuck. (BreakingNews quickly deleted the misspelled message, but the damage was done.)
The sudden online wake spurred real-life action: it set in motion a late-night Austin tribute to Jackson at the Alamo Drafthouse. Drafthouse founder Tim League said he and creative director
Henri Mazza decided to do a sing-along tribute to Jackson Thursday “almost simultaneously” — and the show at the Alamo Ritz downtown sold out almost instantly.
“I called Henri and said, ‘We gotta do this’ and he said, ‘I’m way ahead of you,’ ” League said Friday. “But we’d been doing the Michael Jackson sing-along for years and did a bunch last year as we were prepping for the ‘Thriller’ dance, so it’s a show we have at the ready with props and inventory.”
League and Mazza decided to do the show about 5 p.m., not long after Jackson’s death was announced. By 6:15 p.m. the midnight show was sold out, sales fed almost entirely by Twitter feeds and re-Tweets.
The Drafthouse has some 2,300 Twitter followers; League has 560 on his personal account.
“The whole day was a strange Twitter experience for me and a lot of people,” League said. “The news shot through. I got so many messages immediately when the news started flying. All of my coverage basically came through Twitter.”
League described the mood inside the 200-seat theater as “a roller coaster the whole night. Everybody there was some level of super hardcore fan, me included. Henri, who’s been the creator of this show, is a big fan and all the time he reiterated, ‘This is not about making fun of this at all. I am a huge fan and if you’re going to mock this experience, then there’s the door. This is a celebration.’ Everyone could get up on stage and dance but when there was a slow
song people would get sad. The mood swung wildly. But mostly it was a celebration.”
The Ritz will repeat the experience at midnight tonight and at 10:30 p.m. Saturday.
It was a big-screen representation of a new wrinkle in celebrity mourning: the media we remember most of our favorite artists is now readily available, in online videos (he Moonwalks on Motown’s 25th Anniversary special), downloadable music (“Thriller,” yes, “HIStory,” not so much) and of course, Jackson’s Wikipedia page (which went through some heavy editing on Thursday).
In 24 hours, the 911 call about Michael Jackson was online, the quotes from celebrities about the tragic loss had been gathered into online video compilations, and the grisly post-mortem was well underway. It’s too early to tell if the speed of mourning our icons has increased as much as the way we alerted to their passing.
But we know that when an Elvis, a John Lennon, a Michael Jackson passes, we may stop asking where someone was when they heard the news. Instead, we may ask what online service let us know first: a friend’s text message? Were we Tweeting? Did someone Facebook-post it?
(With reporting from American-Statesman features writer Patrick Beach.)
All things Michael Jackson on Austin360 at this link.
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