Some thoughts on the new media

Today's thoughts are driven by Barak Obama campaign's offer to bypass the media and send his vice presidential choice directly to your cell phone. I read a comment over the weekend that FDR was the first president to understand the power of radio; JFK the first to understand television; and Obama the first to understand the Internet. Whatever. The strategy is clearly one of bypassing the old media with a breaking news event (sort of like getting baseball scores via text). Clearly this works for some things.

Still, I don't think it's the example for all news. For example, a letter to Crain's Detroit Business bemoans cuts at The Detroit News while saying vibrant local coverage is important. No argument there. But the author's call if for "a major push to enable and encourage citizens to inform one another through 'self-generating content' platforms such as blogs and social networking sites." We've got plenty of those in Milwaukee, but while I get some news from them the audiences are far too small to create a "vibrant" local news culture.

AdWeek has a story on branding that, although aimed at advertising, I think has implications for editorial as well. It basically says that the new media should make us rethink how we communicate to build a solid brand. It's not just enough to view it as a new box in the flow chart; rather new media offers us new ways to build our brands. The line I really liked was: "Create engaging media experiences that help form brand expectations." I couldn't help but think about proposed changes at the Chicago Tribune and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel similar to those in Detroit. In both cases, the newspapers are actually talking about cutting back what they are offering readers (at least print readers). So we are supposed to pay more for less. That's not creating "engaging media experiences." It's making us look elsewhere.

Finally, a Google official offers some interest thoughts via the Aspen Times. Quickly bypassing her assertion that "newspaper readers no longer consume an entire newspaper, instead consuming a variety of articles," which seems to assume people ever read the entire newspaper, there are some good ideas in the talk.