Can new, old media co-exist? Two say 'Yes'

A book by super-blogger Arianna Huffington and a conference in Indonesia both reach the conclusion that new and old media can co-exist, and even improve each other.

As could be expected, Huffington says that "journalists are blogging and bloggers are gaining credibility and stature." The first point goes without saying, and the second has more credibility to me when I think about how I received information during the recent national campaign. Most came from politico.com and from fivethirtyeight.com.

The conference, titled "New Media: The End of Conventional Media?" and sponsored by a group named the Alliance of Independent Journalists, called the current news situation a "blogosphere ecosystem" with each form of media informing the other. Despite all the inaccuracies and just plain untruths bandied about by bloggers, there are examples upon examples piling up of where mainstream journalists are picking up on information gathered by non-traditional journalists on the web.

One speaker cited the case of Situ Babakan in West Java as an example of the successful synergy between the social and mainstream media. Objecting to a local administration's plan to build a shopping mall on the lake, local environmentalists and the lake's supporters launched an online campaign to have the plan rejected. "They created a blog, informed web users about the blog and their cause through mailing lists, Facebook, online petitions and other social media. The web-based campaign generated a tremendous buzz that grabbed the mainstream media's attention. As the mainstream media picked up the issue the campaign attracted greater public support," he said.

The key was a mainstream media outlet picking up the issue, and spreading it. If I were editing a newspaper today, I'd have my staff reading over the local blogs for tidbits, just as we used to have beat reporters talk to secretaries at courthouses, then do the reporting necessary to see if the tip is worth a journalistically-sound story.