Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
The Democratic National Convention in Denver Colorado is now history, but spare a thought for these statistics. There were 15,000 media people present in one guise or another. Maybe not big news, but of those a significant number come from new media outlets. The Huffington Post had 20 there, Slate 7, Daily Kos 10. And Google hosted a Big Tent with facilities for 500 bloggers. So cross-overs were everywhere evident: traditional newspapers with journalists catching stories on video, bloggers doing original journalism and everyone feeding off everyone else in a newsday starting at 8am and going onto midnight. Journalists were interviewing each other with bloggers doing live blogs of the interviews!
Maybe just the news chaos of a big event, but to me it points towards a sea change where the so-called ‘new’ media is now in the main stream. Not just commentary on what the old-media puts out, but original and instant journalism of the highest order. The differential is now: those who get paid, and those who do it for other reasons. The old media heirachies are clearly breaking down. And where was my source for all this? Old media of couse. Thank you David Carr of the Age for an excellent and thought provoking article buried away in the Business Section of today’s Age. And could I find it on the Age website? No, for some unaccountable reason it is not listed. Ironic really.