Mainstream media sources tend to report on stories an average of 2.5 hours before blogs pick them up, according to a new study by Cornell researchers. However, the top 10 sources in terms of speed of reporting were all blogs.

To come up with this and other trends of the Internet news cycle, the researchers tracked a series of key quotations appearing on news media sites and blogs during the last three months of the 2008 US presidential election. In total, the study encompassed 1.65 million websites that produced 90 million articles between August 1 and October 31.

Researchers Jure Leskovec, Lars Backstrom and Jon Kleinberg claim to be the first to analyze news trends quantitatively rather than qualitatively. Through a series of algorithms, they were able to measure the rise and fall in popularity of certain distinct phrases - in this case quotations - in the online media world.

What the researchers found is that the overall frequency of each phrase increased exponentially from the first citation until a peak time, after which usage dropped off even more precipitously than the initial rise. The peak for blogs occurred on average 2.5 hours after the peak for mainstream media. In this way, researchers said it is possible to measure how news starts and the way it travels on the Internet.

By far the most frequently mentioned quote was Barack Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment, in which he questioned John McCain and Sarah Palin's ability to change the political status quo. Other popular phrases included McCain's statements that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong" and "I am not President Bush."

While memorable quotations do not necessarily represent the most significant individual news stories, researchers noted that the most peaks generally occurred around the time of specific events. The most activity took place during the Democratic and Republican national conventions; the backlash of Obama's "lipstick on a pig" remark; the start of focused public attention on the financial crisis; and the bailout plan negotiations.

Of the 1.65 million sources, just 20,000 were considered mainstream media - designated as such because they are the sites used by Google News. However, the traditional news media accounted for 30 percent of article sources overall, and 44 percent when considering only the most frequently used phrases.

Blogs and the mainstream media differed slightly in how they approached news stories. The traditional sources tended to move on more quickly in the use of phrases after the peak, indicating a continuous need to find the next big thing. Frequency of quotes on blogs, on the other hand, decreased more gradually, as the blogosphere spent more time dissecting and analyzing each phrase.

The top two speediest sites, determined by how quickly they mentioned a quote before the peak, were political blogs Hot Air and Talking Points Memo. Yet, the blogs only referred to, respectively, 42 and 33 of the top 100 most frequently used phrases. In contrast, the Washington Post came in 40th in terms of speed but managed to mention 78 of the top 100 phrases.

The rankings enter a bit of a gray area in that certain blogs were associated with a traditional news source. For example, CNN's Political Ticker blog ranked 4th for speed - should that count as a blog or as mainstream media? Overall, the blogs of traditional media picked up on phrases before the main news site.

On a partial list of news sources (the fastest? most well-known?) on the researchers' website, The New York Times is conspicuously absent, while its blog The Caucus ranks the same as Reuters and CNN (but still 11 hours ahead of the peak). This seems to be an oversight, as fellow New York Times Co. newspaper the International Herald Tribune, which uses NYT articles for its US-focused content, appears not much further down the list.

While the vast majority of the time blogs are the followers and mainstream media are the leaders in breaking news content, the study found that 3.5 percent of phrases first appeared in the blogosphere. Some of the more highly covered remarks first used by blogs included Obama's comment that determining when human life begins after conception is "above my pay grade" and Palin's assertion that climate change is not a man-made problem.

More than quantify the Internet news cycle, the study reveals many intriguing facets of the way news functions online. Aside from a few specialized sites, mainstream media reports the news while blogs provide commentary. The sheer volume of content produced by traditional media, as demonstrated by the percentage of articles versus those produced by blogs, would appear to indicate that blogs don't cover every aspect of the news the way a newspaper or broadcast station does.

As much as the research provides valuable insight into online news, applying this same type of analysis to other news events may prove difficult. As Sreenath Sreenivasan, a Columbia journalism professor, pointed out to the NYT, the media landscape has changed dramatically since last October with the rise of Twitter as a news source. A measure of the news cycle in the Congressional elections next year therefore will likely look very different.

Source: MemeTracker.org, New York Times