What Gets Lost in the Toss

Notes on a C-SPAN discussion...

Earlier this week, there was a television rebroadcast of a CSPAN panel discussion: "The Modern Presidential Election Campaign Google, YouTube and the National Journal". The panel consisted of: Mark Helperin, the editor-at-large and senior political analyst for Time magazine; Katherine Horn, the online editor of DCexaminer.com; James Kotechi, a video blogger who now works for Politico.com; and Kevin Madden, a former member of Hillary Clinton's campaign committee. The panel discussion was very interesting, and I decided to use this week's blog post to highlight some of the points the panelists made that are pertinent to the uses and effects of new media in news media.

Here's a summary of the pro's and con's of new media by panel participant.

According to Mark Helperin, new media opens up the new forum to everyone and makes it more democratic, but the average joes who are blogging are voicing angry and personal opinions moreso than objective news and insights. He also suggests that these angry and slanted new voices are causing new media to lead in muckracking. From his perspective, the greatest success of new media is in its ability to obtain dominance in market share. Because people are increasingly turning to new media outlets to obtain their news, old media is less likely to do the sort of indepth journalist reporting the public expects from traditional papers.

Katherine Horn agrees to a degree with Helperin. Her observation is that the democratization of media allotted by the onset of new media has introduced an "angry rhetoric" into news media. She finds that the risk of a democratized media is that the angry rhetoric has the potential to overshadow the facts and importance of the stories. She finds that new media does give citizens the opportunity to become reporters themselves and gives reporters in old media the opportunity to become personalities.

James Kotechi found his niche by becoming a political video blogger on youtube while he was a student at Georgetown University. Kotechi feels that in the future, campaigns are going to use websites to compete with both old and new media entities. For Kotechi, such websites are most effective when they are used as mediums that present facts about the candidates instead of mediums that propagandize the candidate.

From a presidential campaign perspective, Kevin Madden has observed that new media allows candidates "to operate at a higher level of speed and precision." This opportunity to operate at a higher level of speed and precision is especially useful if the candidate's opponent isn't doing the same. In such a case, where use of new media used more precisely and pointedly, it can allow the candidate an ability "to obliterate [his or her] opponent." On the other hand, Madden does recognize the fact that, because information--whether accurate or not--travels so fast online, new media also has the ability to destroy either candidate's message and reputation as well.

Each of these panelists presented ideas and observations about new media that every should ponder. While many champion the democratization of news media that has resulted from new media because it gives everyone a voice, very few seem to consider how the voices align themselves with one another. The issue becomes deceptive subjectivity which leads to the question of whether or not a million subjective bloggers are of more benefit to the accuracy of new reporting than two or three trusted traditional journalists? Is new media better and more reliable or is it just cheaper and faster? Should we readily pack up printed paper and throw tradition out of the window for immediacy or should we all take a step back and consider what might be lost in the toss?