The Flow of News: From Facebook to the International Wire

Back in the bad old days, journalists had to go out into the world hunting for stories, attempting to follow developments by hanging onto the coattails of the people involved, spending time driving from place to place or waiting outside in the cold for hours on end.

But then came Facebook. It is to the journalist what the replicator would be to the caveman hungry for his next gazelle. Reporters now sit for hours in front of their feeds hoping for inspiration to present itself, so they can send off some emails, collect some quotes, and weave together a 300 word human interest story.

Last Tuesday, an amateur tattooist from Blackburn posted a cryptic status update, in capitals, about how she was unwilling to change her appearance for anyone. After friends asked for more details, it transpires that she'd just got back from a visit to Blackburn Job Centre, where a clerk had advised Hayley O'Neil (for it is she) that her cheek and lip piercings and tattoos would put off potential employers. He wasn't very tactful about it and apologised during the interview, as it became clear he'd caused offence.

So far so boring, but Tom Moseley at the Lancashire Telegraph didn't think so, and cobbled together a story on it with plenty of emotive quotes from the mother, the standard don't-judge-a-book-by-its-cover cliché, and a stuffy response from the Department for Work and Pensions about how it's standard procedure to give people advice on their appearance.

However, if Facebook is the go-to source for local journalists, it seems local news is the feed from which to pick national stories. Confounding normal boundaries of newsworthiness, the Telegraph ran an article reusing many of the quotes the LT published the day before, but, crucially, misquoting the job centre guy as having told Hayley to put a bag over her head. Of course, the story then exploded its way onto blogs all over the world, even as far as Indonesia and Vietnam.

Inevitably, the comments sections of every site that deemed to relay the story quickly filled up with support for the DWP's stance on the matter, but when the Lancashire Telegraph got desperate for column inches again on a sleepy Sunday, Sam Chadderton elected to share some messages of support for Hayley from piercing and tattoo parlours advertising their "equal opportunities for freaks" policy, somewhat proving the still unnamed job centre employee's original point.

So yes, point and laugh at the girl with the stuff in her face, but she'll have the last laugh now. Dust clouds are rising across East Lancashire from the herds of reality TV talent scouts rushing through the streets to her door.