Today's NYT has an important piece from David Carr, looking at the ongoing media evolution. It should be a must read for anyone who cares about the way the influential universe is changing. I like it because it pretty much says what I've been saying for quite some time now...that the two worlds of blogs and media are really one world, coming together at light speed. As Carr notes:
Politico, which also puts out a newspaper, had 40 people in Denver. The Huffington Post had 20 people, Talking Points Memo had 9, Daily Kos had 10, Slate had 7 and Salon had 9. That list is far from comprehensive and does not begin to describe how thoroughly mediated this convention was. (I was talking with Craig Newmark while he blogged in the Big Tent and realized the kids across from him were live-blogging our conversation.)
The numbers are changing the game. Old media have often (not always) regarded bloggers and their ilk as fleas on the dog. If newspapers and networks didn’t break the story, the gatecrashers wouldn’t have anything to write about. But the new media players who came to Denver were not there just to annotate mainstream coverage: they’re in the hunt themselves.
And then, to illustrate the rate of change:
Just four years ago, the big white tents at the conventions that housed the media hordes would come to life slowly, with stories from the night before being passed around along with articles from the daily press. Now reporters and editors jack in when they wake up and stay there.
“It used to be you could sort of take it easy in the morning and chat over lunch and then maybe start to fire up some stories by midafternoon,” said John F. Harris, editor in chief of Politico and a veteran of The Washington Post. “At this convention, our reporters work from 8 in the morning until midnight.”
Well, that's a pace hard to keep up -- but is truly the world we live in these days...where news can come from anywhere, and the ability to respond quickly and in the same channel should be a requirement for any organization. I've said for years that speed of response becomes key -- the news cycle is so short right now that having a POV and comment in stories becomes more critical each day. Fast twitch PR....it's what we all need right now!