Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Attending a wedding in Ireland several years ago, Mark Little saw fellow guests looking at their phones, as they learned that Michael Jackson had died. Soon, the group was dancing to Thriller as a tribute to the late star. That dance, Little said, happened 15 minutes before the Los Angeles Times had even officially announced Jackson’s death. At that moment, he said he thought, “Wow, that’s the way news is being consumed.”

As the founder of Storyful — a global news agency that finds, collects, and verifies social-media content — Little has served as a leader of our massive information shift: How is news changing? How are stories changing? And what are the ethics involved as traditional media outlets transition from being the gatekeeper to being part of a worldwide reporting network in which every citizen can contribute to — or even completely tell — our world’s most important stories?...