This just in!

The nature of news is changing, more dramatically than I imagined.

I love the 'pigs' commercial from BBH for the Guardian in London. I like it most because it very succinctly sums up in 60 seconds the new world of news that we live in. I'll let you check out the spot for yourself, but the idea behind it is that news is a far more participatory thing than ever before and the 'conversation' can, in the end, drive the story - wolf dies, pigs arrested, pigs admit to insurance fraud, public outrage over housing crisis all leading to banking reform.

This has happened, on a smaller scale, in Singapore this week. Ma Chi, a financial advisor from mainland China crashed his SGD 1.8m Ferrari into a taxi early Saturday morning killing himself, the taxi driver and his Japanese passenger. This simple traffic accident has kicked off an intense debate covering the country's immigration policy, the rising cost of living driven by the recent influx of foreigners and the widening income divide in Singapore. There has not been that much in the press about this - beyond the emerging facts. This story has been driven largely online and largely via social media with people sharing, commenting and contributing to the story. This is increasingly the way that news is going to be. It's a blend of reportage and commentary from (what we used to call) the reader or viewer.

It's a fascinating evolution of a concept (news) that we seem to see as quite static. Look around. It's really not.  Let's see where the Ferrari and the taxi driver story goes next, but don't bank on it being driven solely by the traditional news sources and channels that we know and love.