zlacker

I remember clearly the time when Princess Diana died (1997). For me, it was THE moment when I understood the impact of the Internet. I was randomly browsing the web during the night in Mexico, and suddenly I started to see websites (I think Yahoo and MSN at that time) showing the news. I went to sleep without giving it too much attention.

Next day, all the news in my country were mentioning the death as breaking news. My mind was blown over how I knew about this very important event the night before Mexico TV broke the news.

May the Queen rest in Peace.

>>xtract+(OP)
I had a similar experience. I saw news of her death online and assumed it was some sort of hoax. When I woke up the next morning and saw it on the (TV) news I had this weird “Holy shit! The internet was right!?” moment. It was very surreal. Up until that point I hadn’t even considered that the internet could be used for much beyond screwing around and chat rooms let alone that it could be a platform for breaking news!

>>xtract+(OP)
> My mind was blown over how I knew about this very important event the night before Mexico TV broke the news.

I've had the opposite experience. It's clear that real-time news is detrimental, and it's better for reporting to wait a bit for facts to come in and analysis to be done.

Early reporting is vague, light on facts, disjointed, facts are hedged, etc. It's really quite worthless.

>>axioli+hK
Your parent comment never claimed that real-time news was a good or bad thing.

>>xtract+(OP)
The Queen learned of her father’s death by telegraph — her own death was announced by tweet.