The comedian Jerry Seinfeld once joked about how amazing it is "that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper." This cosy analog template that was locked up in the printing presses late night and delivered at your doorstep early morning was rudely disturbed by the arrival of the digital media: first radio and television , with its possible 24/7 news delivery; then the Internet and the frills and spills it brought (such as social media, citizen journalism, etc), all of which combined it to give us a 60/24/7/52/365 news cycle.
Suddenly there was too much news. It was fun at first, and as we swam expansively into the ocean of information, we left behind both the confines and comfort of pool-sized print media exposure. Newspapers in the West, where the digital media revolution hit with gale force around the turn of the century, shrank and shrivelled. Some died, others barely survived; no one prospered.
But what is news? How accurate is it and how much of it is accurate? Who determines the line between hearsay and news? Who are the arbiters of truth - and taste? In the tsunami of information unleashed by the digital media, how does one navigate past the flotsam and jetsam to find the pearls among oysters that enrich our lives?
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