Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his apartment at 3:31 EST today, and the news was out in less than 90 minutes.
It’s always a saddening time when someone unexpectedly dies, and he was quite the talented actor who will be missed. Frankly, I’m even more interested in seeing his performance as The Joker in the upcoming Batman film The Dark Knight as it was his last. I also took a minute to wander over to his Wikipedia entry, and to my surprise, it had already been updated (see screen capture taken at 3:06 MDT).
The Speed of News
It’s frightening how fast news travels in the year 2008, but it’s also a lesson to companies, people and PR practitioners. News moves at rocket speed, and it no longer becomes tomorrow’s bird-cage liner with the advent of the Internet, social networks (I read it first on Digg) and other online sources that index their news to be read for years to come.
Are the lines blurring between SEO and PR? Absolutely. And the PR person who doesn’t adjust may just end up cleaning bird cages instead of practicing PR.
RIP to Heath Ledger, 28, born in Perth, Australia.
Films
