IT’s long been the case that the daily print media cannot hope to stay abreast of a big news story when it breaks overnight. Never has this been truer than this morning, when the papers largely failed to get to grips with the biggest news story of the decade – the astonishing ascendancy of Donald Trump. The only paper I saw that got close to the news of him winning the presidential vote overnight was the Daily Mail, which managed to update its later editions with a hint of what was to come.
Most papers simply went to press early with an anodyne splash headline, hedging their bets, such as The Times (below). By 5am this morning, I was up to date not only with the news online, but with a plethora of comment and analysis. My daily paper, delivered later on, with pages of place-holding words, was largely redundant.
Rupert Murdoch is reported to have proclaimed recently that newspapers are likely to be printed for another ten years. At the current rate of change, their lifespan could be even shorter.
