News is becoming more accessible by the day through many new platforms. In the article, Meikle quotes Burnett & Marshall who see a greater involvement of the user and news hierarchies being in flux. Audiences can see news from a variety of different sources while having to hierarchise them in their mind. While one reporter may be a single voice on an obscure blog, having the exclusive scoop on a news item, BBC News (for example) may have a story fabricated on rumours and spin, yet the audience would most likely choose BBC News as a respectable source over one reporter on a blog. I would put the art of hierarchising is down to reputation. In an online world, people must earn respect through their exclusive, true stories so that an audience will keep coming back for more.
Is "news" in a Web 3.0 world real news, or is it a constant feed of specultation without facts behind it? It could be argued that news has always been this way. However news nowadays is more broken down. Whereas in the past a news story had depth, the "breaking news" culture we live in means that people are fed snippets of news which is slowly built upon. Twitter is a perfect example of this. Reuters is a long-established, well-respected news agency and has been using Twitter (http://twitter.com/Reuters) for a while. In 140 characters, this status update can give the latest update on a story with a link to more information. I feel that Twitter, which has only exploded in the last few months, will play a major part in news distribution in the future.
The age old saying that today's news is tomorrow's chip paper has just as much relevance today as it did 50 years ago. The stream of information is so fast that much news is lost in the crossfire.
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Your eg of twitter providing news is an interesting one. I haven't actually used this but had just thought of it as a Facebook style update and it hadn't occured to me that certain companies like Retuers may use it for such important updates.
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