Michael Jackson has died at the age of 50. He reportedly died after suffering from a cardiac arrest and falling into a coma on the way to hospital. The news was broken on a celebrity Web site, and spread via social networks such as Twitter and Facebook before traditional media would even touch the story.
It’s a shocking and premature end to the life of one of the entertainment world’s most famous and iconic characters, but it’s now been confirmed that Michael Jackson is dead. He suffered a heart attack at around 12pm midday at his Holmby Hills home in Los Angeles, and was taken to UCLA hospital after falling into a coma.
Doctors are now saying that paramedics failed to resuscitate the singer after finding him not breathing when they arrived at his home. Michael Jackson was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. It’s a truly global news event, and one which was broken on the Web first, hours before more traditional news outlets got hold of the story.
TMZ.com, a celebrity gossip news site owned by Time Warner, broke the story of Michael Jackson’s cardiac arrest around four hours after it happened. The news then spread across the Web in that most viral of methods, with Twitter updates and Facebook status updates getting the news out there faster than any other method could.
At 5.20pm, TMZ then announced Michael Jackson had died, although its use of just one unnamed source meant most people were skeptical and willing to wait for confirmation from a more reliable source. That confirmation took another hour or so, with The Los Angeles Times, Reuters, and The Press Association then confirming his death.
The big news story is obviously Michael Jackson’s death, but the secondary story is how the Web is succeeding in replacing traditional media when news of this type breaks. Traditional media outlets have to wait for official confirmation before they will report news, whereas sites such as TMZ.com can take a gamble and report news that may end up being declared false.
Then there is the use of social networking sites in spreading the news. Before the Internet, we were totally reliant on television channels, radio stations, and the big media outlets for our news, but now there are so many options thanks to the Web. Which is surely a good thing because it stops news being controlled and filtered in the way that was once standard.
Rest In Peace Michael Jackson. And Rest In Peace Traditional Media.
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