Sharing Old News

Old News newspaper image – urbantimes.co

What I’m about to share is old news.  Literally.

To what exactly am I referring?  I’m referring to the fact that this post is a “scheduled post,” i.e. I drafted this post in advance of today and used an automated scheduling feature within my WordPress application to publish this content to you on today’s date (Monday, August 19, 2013) and at a specific time.

Have you ever considered the age of the content within the individual blog posts that you read?

Since blogs and other social media channels have surfaced as news vehicles, these new digital channels have been touted as ideal platforms for sharing “late-breaking,” real-time news information.

But, is this age of instantaneous news a reality when a good majority of the social content being shared today has been prescheduled?

As a holder of a journalism degree, I’m comfortable with the concept of an editorial calendar, and the fact that social media content creators today may be using content scheduling applications doesn’t surprise me, but, what about you?  At this time when digital news channels are so dominant, do you think the news information that you receive is really new?

Though this is my first scheduled MySheCave.com post, I can understand how other bloggers could appreciate the flexibility of prescheduling their posts from a blog management and administrative perspective.  Can you think of reasons why a blogger might want or need to schedule posts in advance?

Already, there’s some evidence that prescheduled posts yield poorer engagement results than manual postings by digital markers, however, I think it’s more important to consider whether or not scheduled online news postings could pose harm to readers.  For example, are readers being deceived in any way if they read a post on a certain day that was written months before?

As long as online news channel subscribers are aware that today’s social media channel content, including its timing, may not be exactly as it seems, I think readers will be ok.

And, with this post, I’m doing my part to inform and share this news, which as I mentioned before, is not new.