There are no stories in today's top stories.
It's all sound bites and lots of effect - punch lines, cutting here and there and everywhere, but rarely that crucial detail that will grab your attention for more than a few moments.
The most popular print news ends up being a Metro, or some similar thin collection of captions, titles, and photographs. The news business being in the business of getting the news published and circulated, killed the story - your stories.
This might be the top reason why print is dying. Editors deliver a product that is packaged as a self contained, portable medium readers can consume on the go. MacNews with cell phone conversations on the side. You will feel satisfied, but hardly nourished.
We are stitching together our own stories. With the help of new media, we add our own flavor to the news that matters to us. The additional dimensions come in many flavors - comments on blogs, feeds, online communities - more and more away the conversation happens from mainstream media sites.
Who are today's storytellers? Increasingly, they are individuals just like you. The "who" in the story varies from your neighbor, to an inspirational leader, to the everyday man. They all have one thing in common - they touched the storyteller, making an emotional connection.
What kinds of stories are we sharing? Things we learned, places we have been, happenings we have witnessed. We are also teaching each other what is important in our communities. One thing is quite certain - there is no "off the record" anymore.
Where is everywhere. The world may not be flat just yet, it has gotten a lot smaller. Examples abound, from the remote corners of an Egyptian jail to the tremors of the city where we forever left our heart - San Francisco.
Why do we have this need to share what is going on in the most minute details? Reviews, interactions, summaries all demonstrate a desire to add detail to the official version of the story. We learn about ourselves by listening to the reasons that move us.
How is increasingly online, and potentially not in the usual economies of scale of the news business. Instead, we are scattered among Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, blogs, Web portals, communities, YouTube, Flickr, etc., depending on our interests.
This content that in the traditional news writing would have been at the bottom is the crucial detail that can stir the news in a new direction. Increasingly, the top story could become one of your stories.
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