Perhaps the most substantive change to the nature of news over the past 30 years is that our use of technology has created an immediacy to news access throughout the chain of events, coupled with the "CNN effect". Reporters are on the scene, dispatched with satellite uplinks, and the pictures are made available on TV screens at bars, Starbucks, gas pumps, elevators and in the work place.
Where the crime news of the day would have only been received on the 5pm and 11pm news, and the morning paper previously, we are having it pumped into our pocket via Twitter feeds, SMS messages and news feeds. This immediacy of news has created mini-markets of opportunity to create market share and gain ad revenue if you can be the major news organ reporting on an issue. The utter saturation with news means that, as a populace, we are bombarded with stories of tragedies. It's like we want to soak in it like a hot bath, to revel and steep in the information. What before might have been confined to 6 column inches in a newspaper 3 months after the fact is now created with 40 hours of coverage.
I think this immediacy, and the saturation of media, is a significant force in fooling the American people into believing that violent crime has gone up over the past 15 years, when the opposite is true.
Mass murder events are relatively flat over the past 30 years. What has changed is the immediacy of learning about it, and the saturation by the media. The most deadly case of school violence in US history was actually nearly 100 years ago, in Bath, Michigan. Mass murder is a human problem of mental health and evil.
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