You Must Be Streaming

YOU MUST BE STREAMING
[SOURCE: New York Magazine, AUTHOR: Kurt Andersen]
[Commentary] We think we know that the professional news media, especially newspapers, are obsolete, that the future is all about (excuse the expression) you -- media created by amateurs. But such PowerPoint distillation tends to overlook the fact that mainstream media are not all simply shriveling and dying but in some instances actually evolving. And in evolution, there are always fascinating transitional iterations along the way. Such as newspapers’ suddenly proliferating forays into online video. At their best, the newspapers’ online videos are, minute for minute, superior to TV news. As I write, CNN is airing a live press conference by Anna Nicole Smith’s lawyer and a loop of Smith vamping, while a significant breaking news story -- the U.S. claim that Muqtada al-Sadr has left Iraq for Iran -- is running in tiny type across the bottom of the screen. Given the dumb-and-dumber choices, I can easily imagine newspapers’ Web-video portals becoming the TV-journalism destinations of choice for smart people -- that is, in the 21st century, the dominant nineteenth-century journalistic institution, newspapers, might beat the dominant twentieth-century institution, TV, at the premium part of its own game.
http://nymag.com/news/imperialcity/28152/index.html

* TV Networks Lag In Web Video
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=55...