These Days, News Travels At Click-Speed

By: Daniel Sieberg
Topics: Tech Talk

Within an hour I found out through an e-mail circulated within the newsroom. I then contacted my wife (who is a fellow Australian) via Gmail on her iPhone. She already knew. Minutes later I was chatting with two of my friends online, and the word continued to spread within my immediate sphere of contacts and colleagues. Heath Ledger was dead at age 28. It's another reminder of how many people are plugged into their digital data wherever they are, and just how rapidly news can travel.

The news of Heath Ledger's death appears to have had its origins online so perhaps the way people shared it is only appropriate. The entertainment site TMZ.com claims it exclusively announced the news first, though the Associated Press also circulated a news bulletin close to the reported time of death. Either way, the (mis)information started to spread like Web wildfire. (By the way, has TMZ.com exploded in popularity or what? That's a whole other discussion.)

Ledger's biography entry on Wikipedia was changed in astonishingly quick fashion to reflect his death. (It never ceases to amaze me how fast a celebrity death is noted on Wikipedia.) The story rapidly bubbled up to the main page of the Internet-pulse site Digg.com. Users of Facebook (including me) had changed their personal status to reflect a knowing of the news. And of course every major news organization was issuing their own online alerts.

To dig a little further, one wonders why the death of Heath Ledger generated so much buzz online so fast. Sure, he's a celebrity and respected actor but not on the level with Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts. It could be because it seems so shocking since he appeared to have no major substance abuse issues and often seemed on an even keel. What do we really know about anybody, but in a world of high-profile troubled celebrities (need I name names?) Ledger wasn't expected to die so suddenly.

But I wonder if perhaps it could also be because he was quite well known to the generation that's tapped into the Web and grown up with his films and other work. Many of us know where to find our friends and loved ones online at any time of the day or night, and it's often human nature to want to share certain news or gossip. Plus there's usually a compulsion to be the first to connect with as many people as possible. In any case, it's another reminder of how we've become so attuned to our high-tech listening posts, and how each of us is a mini-broadcaster with a built-in audience.