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New Media is going to kick the mainstream media’s ass (or perhaps it already is)

New Media is going to kick the mainstream media’s ass (or perhaps it already is)

Steve Gillmor’s post over at his new blog gesturelab.com planted this seed in my head:

Meanwhile these two guys behind me were printing money. I’m sitting there typing up my little notes, while two guys from EndGadget one row back are getting 7 million page views in 90 minutes. Two tin cans and a string: 7 million clicks. Later, my mainstreamer friend asks the media controller if there’s a replay (he had no idea) while the EndGadget boys were busy uploading a podcast of the show. And onstage Jobs and his lieutenants were announcing (in one of a list of ten features) the disembowelment of network television.

The reality is that right now there are a couple folks writing columns for various blogs, such as Engadget, that tomorrow will be read by more folks than visit the Boston Globe, the LA Times, and many other mainstream newspapers. Some of them might even be working in their underwear.

Because we’re fortunate enough to operate The Blog Herald, we receive alot of calls from the mainstream media asking some very basic questions about the blogosphere. Like, “what’s a blog”.. which we received as recently as two days ago. Or, “How many blogs are there…”

The lack of knowledge of the mainstream media about this new world that we live in is scary…

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But therein lies the opportunity…

Just like the fellows from Engadget that were at Steve Job’s keynote speech at WWDC earlier this week.. each of us has an opportunity to move faster than the mainstream media.. because we get it..

And they don’t…

View Comments (4)
  • You’d be surprised how many people don’t know what a blog is. When I meet someone knew and they ask what i do… I say I blog and am an artist working from home. Half of the ones who ask have not heard the term blog yet.

    It’s nice to get something ; )

    cheers!

  • In February the local newspaper (or the big company behind it) here decided to set up a couple of blogs where they wanted two young authors to write about their “media using habits”, since there was this “newspaper week” in Finland or something. Well, I was asked to come along, though I had this feeling that the folks in the newspaper had no idea what blogging is actually about. I mean, to set up a blog and write there *one week* about how you use your media… that kind of writing (I don’t consider it ‘blogging’) about how your day has gone etc. is just boring to read.

    I ended up telling about the social media landscape and different blogs and stuff like that, but one week isn’t really a time to get readers. After that week I got the feeling that the old media is lost in the internet world.

    Something about the lost-being says the use of the phrase “web diaries” (nettipäiväkirjat in Finnish) instead of “blogs”. I think it gives the wrong image about them, since web diaries are about yourself, blogs are about the world around you.

    Though there are these Finnish newspapers that are trying to get into blogging (like the biggest paper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat), I think so far their efforts haven’t been so successful. From my point of view it’s because the editors are responsible for their writings to their employer (roughly put: if you say something we or our advertisers don’t like, you can be fired), whereas independent bloggers have no authority except themselves to be responsible for.

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