Mainstream Media Tries to Wake Up

It’s so interesting to watch how some of the mainstream news media has suddenly awakened to the fact that many people today are getting their news through other sources online, rather than from newspapers, radio and television, including cable TV news. And, mainstream media is quickly trying to figure out how to get on-board Web 2.0.

It was humorous to watch a CNN news reader over the weekend ask viewers to send him questions via Twitter that he might respond to on-the-air. He was offering sort of a poor man’s 16-seconds in the spotlight of fame. Yet, clearly, the CNN news reader had not really learned how Twitter works or that Twitter has its own culture with its own protocol or that Twitter’s news rockets along much faster than CNN.  In other words, CNN’s gimmick was downright dopey and revealed a real lack of knowledge about online media. 

For one thing, Twitter and other online social media channels are ongoing mini-blog conversations about an infinite number of issues.  What the CNN guy was suggesting was akin to me calling you on the telephone to ask that you reply via Twitter. How smart is that?

A senior TV network news editor in New York told me recently that things like Twitter were, “silly.” It just goes to show, again, that people in the mainstream media – like most advertising and PR agencies — have yet to really comprehend the online world.