For me, it has always been enough to stick to the subject of this blog without getting into discussions about the deeper meaning of blogs and the Internet as “new media” of communication.
Except today.
As I read other blogs on all kinds of subjects, it’s common to see a strong air of “new media” superiority vis-à-vis the “mainstream media,” or MSM. And it strikes me as ridiculous.
Why? Because whether a blog acts as a platform for opinion and analysis or as an aggregator of news, it is almost always feeding off the work of newspapers, wire services, and other established media outlets. Like parasites.
In this corner of the blogosphere, we all depend on media organizations that have reporters resident in
I could go on, but my real point was to point out a huge and terrific piece of work that the Miami Herald just cranked out about Operation Peter Pan, which moved more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children to the
The Herald’s feature covers the stories of individual Peter Pan children and key figures in the operation, it has a database of the 14,000 children, and more. The paper’s editor wrote a note explaining the genesis of the project.
Right now there’s a race going on in the media world, where the old revenue model is in decline and a new, viable one is not yet in place. We don’t know how that race will turn out, but this much seems clear: The day the MSM disappears, the “new media” – not to mention citizens who care about multiple sources of quality news content – are in big trouble.
