Hold the front page” – oh, that’s so yesterday

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

I can still remember the thrill of my first front page byline and my first news scoop. It was a shooting I had witnessed from the balcony of a friend’s house.

There I was, taking in the fresh air of a Penang evening, when I saw a car drive up to the house across the street. It stopped and two men jumped out of the car and the next thing I heard were explosions and screams. The two men ran out, jumped into the car and fled. A man, with blood streaked all over his shirt, came running out of the house.

I called my news editor – “hold the front page,” I think I said – and took the bus to the office to write up the copy.

Today, I would have just tweeted, and I wouldn’t have to work for any news organisation.

Which is what Twitter user Daniel Tumiwa did when he reportedly became the first to report the bomb blasts at JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels in Jakarta last week. “2 boms go off inside Ritz Carlton and Marriott coffee shops! Not kidding. Am here,” reads one of his tweets.

Then: “Left location.Shocked. Lots of blood. Breakfast meetings at coffee shops while bombs went off.”

In newspaper parlance, Tumiwa got the scoop. He scooped the global news networks. He pipped CNN and BBC to the post.

It reminds me of the race the actor Ashton Kutcher started with CNN. He challenged the news network that he would get one million followers before they did by a certain timeline; if he won, he would donate mosquito nets to the poor in Africa.

He won. At the time he got one million followers, CNN’s stood at 988,239. He said, “We now live in an age in media that a single voice can have as much power and relevance on the Web, that is, as an entire media network. And I think that to me was shocking.”

Liberating as well, I suppose, depending how you look at it.

I think it’s great that every citizen with broadband access can now be a reporter and be the first to break news. (There is a difference though between reporting news and speculating on rumours which some bloggers do – but I think the good outweighs the bad and we shouldn’t let a few bad apples spoil the party for all of us.)

And Twitter allows this even more than any other social media platforms because it’s instant, snappy and enclosed. Every Twitter user is potentially a publisher. By the same token, anyone who runs a LinkedIn group is potentially a publisher.

After all, publishing means delivering the right content to the right audience.

So when my hotelier and travel industry friends moan to me about the changes in their business and how technology is complicating their businesses, I say, “You’re not alone, honey.”

News reporting has become a commodity. The publishing model has changed forever. Traditional news organisations are struggling to keep up with the new models – they are like the legacy airlines, you could say.

The technology that is allowing all of us to communicate any way we want, whenever we want and wherever we are, is driving change in all our businesses and our lives.

And much as I yearn for the good old days when I could scream the words, “Hold that front page”, I also know those days are gone forever.

Just like the excitement in news broadcaster Walter Cronkite’s voice when he reported on man’s first landing on the moon 40 years ago – alas, his voice too has fallen silent.

Yeoh Siew Hoon is producer of WIT, which stands for Web In Travel. – Asia’s leading travel distribution, marketing and technology conference.

WIT 2009 will be held from Oct 20-23 at Suntec City, Singapore. This year’s WIT will comprise The WIT Conference (Oct 20-21) and The WIT Ideas Lab (9-11am, Oct 22 & Oct 23)