New media continues rise, begets old media coverage

If you haven’t heard by now, circulation at print media outlets is on the decline and new media is making a significant uptick. But, landing coverage from more traditional outlets is still coveted by anyone looking for exposure. Understandably so, traditional media offers authors credibility that new media is still working to earn. As if the writing wasn’t already on the wall I’d like to make two cases for the changing face of media content:

Case one:
As newspapers are forced to lay off reporters due to budgetary problems, where will they go? You guessed it: new media. This recent post by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch discusses how 1,500 writers are now working for AOL.com. Arrington says hundreds of them are former writers for media elites like BusinessWeek, New York Times and USA Today, to name a few. Why should you care? Well, that means new media just got a whole lot more credible. Journalism isn’t dead, it’s just changing.

Case two:
I mentioned earlier that traditional media is still important. It has a stamp of credibility that authors and experts want and need. However, the way we’re seeing traditional media garnered is changing. In the not-so-distant past reporters and producers would respond to great ideas offered by way of a pitch. While there’s still a place for traditional pitching, there’s an obvious shift to an environment where journalists want to find their own experts and/or content. Why should you care? This means a larger focus on online outreach may be the key to garnering the traditional coverage that most experts are looking for.

Here’s an example. This YouTube video has been splashed across network television, mentioned on morning radio, and the like. What started as a video of a wedding party dancing down an aisle has become a national sensation. Not only has it landed the couple on “TODAY” but has even been spoofed by fellow YouTubers.

Ding, dong old media’s dead … or is it?

Can you almost hear the munchkins cheering “ding, dong old media’s dead,” as the whole world declares the proverbial bucket of water has been dumped and old media is “meeelllttting, I’m melllting” – I digress. Think again. According to a recent article on “Fast Company,” researchers at Cornell have found that traditional news outlets still lead the blogosphere by 2.5 hours when it comes to breaking news. That’s almost light years by web standards. So, before we get ready to dump water on old media and watch it melt away, maybe we should take a step back and look at how old and new media are and will continue to work together. Here’s a breakdown of the Cornell study:

- Instead of examining a few case-study pieces of news and making behavioral conclusions from limited cases, researchers used a powerful algorithmic search. 1.6 million mainstream media and blogs were analyzed in real-time
- Specific phrases were sampled from each site and compared to how they appeared elsewhere – kind of a text-based fingerprint
- By comparing where these “fingerprint phrases,” or memes, first surfaced, and then watching for them to pop up elsewhere online, the Cornell team has uncovered how news propagates online
- The main result: It's still the traditional news portals that tend to break the news. Blogs followed up the stories an average of 2.5 hours later
- In 3.5 percent of the cases news broke on blogs first, before later being picked up by the news sites. Indicating an increasingly professional blogosphere