I'm going to file this post from Pandagon as being highly relevant to my previous post about the speed of media becoming a detriment to its usefulness:

"Last night on the Daily Show, Ed Helms read his prewritten debate report to a stunned Jon Stewart. Stewart's straight man simply couldn't believe Helms had reported an event that hadn't happened yet. When asked what happens if news is made the next night, Helms replied, 'that's what bloggers are for.'

Today, CBS accidentally posted the AP's prewritten debate report. Aside from some blanks that needed to be filled in, the article's core was written, all the way down to the past tense ('The 90-minute encounter was particularly crucial for Kerry')."

It's almost like there's a Bell Curve, where we hit this peak of instant 24 hour news and everyone was really well informed, but then it just kept coming faster, and at greater volume, and slowly but surely it becomes almost entirely meaningless.