gathering the lunch gang with Shel. (photo courtesy of Lunaweb)

On the eve of my trip to the 2008 New Communications Forum in Sonoma, CA, I’m looking back at a couple of inspiring and energizing conferences that I’ve had the opportunity to attend in the past month - South By Southwest Interactive in March, and Podcamp DC this past weekend. Both very different events, by way of scale and influence, but both great forums for sharing ideas and connecting face to face with the trailblazers of emerging, participatory media. Looking ahead to Sonoma, I’ll be sharing a stage with Shel Israel and Tom Foremski as well as a panel with Steve Lubetkin.It’s encouraging to me that there are many people who see value in the story of my journey into disruptive media, from the eyes of this old media footsoldier. Yes, i know.. “disruptive” is just more conference-speak. Look, let me assure you… ALL of these social media are very disruptive, and there are real economic and human consequence of this disruption. And while social media creates kool-aid drinker evangelists, and very vocal, antagonistic, contrarian detractors, the fact of the matter is that social media simply ARE.They are just communications tools that can be adopted by many - those with useful, meaningful things to say, and those with very little value to bring to the enterprise.So it’s worthwhile to me, as an “old media” dinosaur, to examine how and why these disruptions are taking place and to see where there may be areas where these worlds collide. That, I believe is where very extraordinary things can happen, right at that intersection. At the end of the day, I come at this from a guy witnessing upheaval in the industry that pays my mortgage and feeds my family. You better believe I want to get out there and meet these agents of change.

South by Southwest Interactive

NBC News sent me and two colleagues to Austin to attend SXSW interactive back in March and our team really came away energized and inspired. There are some really great platforms out there that are built on participation and community that are very eager to integrate with traditional media companies. From a strategic standpoint, there are some very smart firms like Forrester Research that are advising big media on how to develop their social web strategies. Forrester’s Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang are a formidable team in this space and Charlene’s SXSW presentation is well worth examining, and is outlined here.A very fun, kind of “rock star” moment for me was being interviewed live on Qik by Robert Scoble. We talked about the impact of this technology and how audience interaction becomes the real game changer here. Pictured below the video is me, CC Chapman and Rocky Barbanica. Love both of those guys, and Rocky, like me is tasked with keeping the talent like Scoble in check. ;-)The photo was taken by friend and very savvy Canadian marketing pro Adele McAlear.

Podcamp DC

Certainly smaller in scale than SXSW, Podcamp DC makes up for it with enthusiasm, knowledge base, and grassroots community. I had an opportunity to speak with NPR’s Andy Carvin about social media tools being used as a “new journalism”. We were able to cite the Midwest earthquake of last week, where people on Twitter were sharing pretty dramatic first-person accounts of the tremors. These messages caught the attention of NBC Nightly News, and were included as an element of our coverage.I wish I’d been able to spend more time at Podcamp DC. I want to extend special thanks to Tammy Munson and Joel Mark Witt for pulling this terrific event together. Fortunately, the very savvy DC blogging community provides excellent coverage of the un-conference.Helen MosherThursday Bramcaseysoftwaretechrepublicanwireless musejoelogonIf I’ve missed any please leave links in the commments! Looking forward to connecting with people in Sonoma, and feel very enriched to know some very smart trailblazers in this field.

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your humble blogger in Iraq

Just on the heels of a trip to Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, I’ve got a moment to reflect before I hop on plane for South By Southwest Interactive. As we traveled to places with names like Hawijah, Kirkuk, and Jalalabad, I observed a recurring theme. Young battle hardened commanders in both Afghanistan and Iraq were passionately, perhaps with a certain evangelism, speaking about their work there. They weren’t talking body counts or offensives though, they were talking about micro-finance, road building, infrastructure, reconciliation banking, and grass roots governance. It occurred to me that their formal military training prepared them for precious little of this. And as I spoke with a General there, he said these soldiers were learning this stuff in theater, as he put it “at the speed of the network”. The speed of the network.. that concept really stuck with me.

Media is certainly evolving at the speed of the network. New web technologies and and platforms have ushered in a new era of personal publishing. These widely available tools are evolving faster than most traditional media companies can keep up with. I really enjoy experimenting with these technologies as a way to connect with very cool, interesting people on Twitter and Facebook, among others. Like those soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, employees of companies, including mainstream media, are adopting these new technologies as a way to engage in conversation. Any more, media is how we shake hands, it’s a how we define ourselves. A nifty little Pew research study echoes these observations about early adopters (us).

These days they are just as likely to produce material. One common refrain is that they think more change lies ahead and they are eager to watch and participate.
Pew Internet and American Life Project

That’s kind of where I find myself. I LOVE how social media allows us to connect with one another across cultural, professional, and social boundaries. Recently, I was on assignment in Africa and used the Qik platform along with my Nokia N95 to do a LIVE to web video interview with Sir Bob Geldof from Ghana.

As Jeff Jarvis points out in his post dubbing me the “human satellite truck”, the cool thing about Qik is the live chat function. As you watch the video, you’ll notice that I interrupt Geldof and my producer to take a question from Twitter friend Mike Neumann. So in addition to Meet the Press, now we can have “Meet the People” To Geldof’s credit, he didn’t miss a beat and answered Mike by name. Incidentally, he seemed fascinated with both Twitter and Qik. As powerful as Qik and a Nokia N95 are, they don’t replace, nor should they in my mind, the tools that traditional broadcast media use to gather the news. It’s important to note that my Nokia’s wifi connection was coming off the US TV Pool satellite. There was no mobile data network to be found in Ghana’s capitol city, Accra. Take a look at all of this gear.

one meter uplink dish in Arusha, Tanzania

interview gear in Arusha, Tanzania

This is what it took, along with the skills of an immensely talented NBC News team, to produce this live Today show interview with Ann Curry, the President and the First Lady.

I LOVE that I can finally embed NBC News video in my blog now! That aside, I don’t subscribe to zero sum notions of one type of media replacing another. What traditional media does is still, and I suspect always will be, relevant. Simply from a technical standpoint, there isn’t wifi or mobile data networks in many parts of the world. Sometimes it takes the knowledge base and technical expertise of seasoned pros to get the story out. Social media can complement it’s traditional older sibling in tremendously useful ways though, creating a rich experience for both traditional media and its fans. The interactivity of platforms like Qik not withstanding, the fans of your media brand, given an opportunity, want to be part of the process. They want to help!

When Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager stepped down, a wire service errantly captioned a photograph of the staffer. Many sites, including MSNBC.COM ran the picture. I was one of my Twitter friends who pointed out the mistake, and after a quick google image search to confirm, I called our desk to have them alert the the web folks.

So this correction came lightning-fast, and it was all because my friends on Twitter have an open social communication channel through me.

The Conversation Agency blog excerpts this very interesting Virginia Heffernen piece in the New York Times about the demise of the critically acclaimed show “Friday Night Lights”. In it she emphasizes the imperative on media companies to give people a means to participate. While she specifically mentions “art and entertainment”, this applies to all media, including news.

art and entertainment in the digital age are highly collaborative, and none of it can thrive without engaging audiences more actively than ever before. Fans today see themselves as doing business with television shows, movies, even books. They want to rate, review, remix. They want to make tributes and parodies, create footnotes and concordances, mess with volume and color values, talk back and shout down.
New York Times, “Art in the Age of Franchising” January 20, 2008

The “how” of all this participation, and social media engagement is what leaves many companies, including media firms, scratching their heads. I think a good “un-strategy” is to to let employees who are already “operating at the speed of the network”, just keep doing what they’re doing. These people are your best brand ambassadors. Web strategist and Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang outlines three “impossible” but absolutely necessary conversations corporations need to have if they take social media seriously. He breaks them down to the following: ask for feedback, say positive things about competitors, and admit when you’re wrong. To me, the feedback conversation can reap huge rewards and social media allows for an open channel.

I’ve been ruminating these thoughts from Austin, Texas where I’ll be attending the South By Southwest Interactive festival. NBC News has given me this very unique opportunity, and I’m eager to walk amongst the new Saronoffs and Marconis of modern communication. Technology and web platforms allow people to speak with each other like never before. The question is, how do we fit in to these conversations, or foster them ourselves. This is what I’ll be asking some very smart people here in Austin. Stay tuned.

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Dateline: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - covering President Bush from inside “the bubble”

Here in Riyadh, we’re wrapping up a trip with President Bush, which the administration hopes has jump started the Israeli/Palestinian peace process, while at the same time, building support with Gulf region states to apply pressure on Iran. As with all of these trips with the President, we’ve been working long hours, and enduring relentless travel schedules. In nine days we will have traveled to Israel, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. My job with NBC News allows me unique access to history and I take advantage of these moments to share what we’re covering with friends on Twitter. There are so many behind-the-scenes moments I like to share, that if you follow me there, you’ll know I can get a bit breathless with my dispatches.

So it came as a bit of an unwelcome surprise to see this in Abu Dhabi:

We apologize the site you are attempting to visit has been blocked due to its content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political, and moral values of the United Arab Emirates.
- page that loads when attempting to access Twitter from UAE

For me this was a little bit of a shock. I’ve been to a number of restrictive countries before, but as we are still in a somewhat nascent stage of the social media lifespan, I believe many of us are pushing the edges of what types of communications are acceptable to employers, and in this case, governments. A Facebook friend and social media champion, who works for the administration, had noticed that in my profile that I had been unable to Twitter from Abu Dhabi. It was an interesting contrast to see this person’s take on the draconian speech restrictions placed on web conversations here. Ultimately though, it was just a bit of a nuisance for me - causing a few hours of Twitter “blackout” - and i was able to resume posting from Saudi Arabia.

brutal realities of restricted speech

The entire thing gave me pause though. What about the people who have to live under such restrictions, often enforced at the end of a gun? I can’t begin to imagine what that life would be like. I’ve had tastes of it, if only fleetingly, ultimately to return home where I wonder sometimes if we take free speech for granted. As I sit here in Riyadh, Saudi blogger Fouad Alfaran has been held in Jeddah’s Dahban Prison since December, just for speaking freely on his blog. In China, blogger and construction company executive Wei Wenhau was beaten to death by local authorities for shooting video of a protest. And as our journey takes us next to Egypt, the courage of Wael Abbas - an Egyptian blogger who exposes tyranny and corruption in that country - must be recognized.

We work very hard to cover the President of the United States, and work very hard to do it as fairly and accurately as humanly possible, but never does it require the personal moral courage of the people listed above. As I Twittered away the hours late into the evening in the Riyadh workspace, one of my Twitter friends challenged the coverage of the White House by my colleagues and contemporaries.

us news + white house + editorially independent is a mirage so far this century… good luck managing the hypocrisy there.
- http://twitter.com/chesspark

While that stung a bit, and I don’t entirely agree with the premise, I do know that our jobs don’t require the courage of Wei Wenhau, Fouad Alfaran and Wael Abbas. So maybe I won’t take our abiltiy to speak freely quite as much for granted anymore. I only hope that faced with similar challenges, I’ll be as brave as these bloggers.

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In a move that acknowledges the diminishing influence of one-way communication channels, NBC has renamed the Television Stations Division “Local Media Division”. There was a great deal of coverage in industry blogs. Media Week and Lost Remote have both framed the change as a fundamental shift in business.

NBC Local Media better reflects the full scope of our capabilities, as well as our ability to offer clients a fully-integrated, local media solution across the full portfolio of our assets.-John Wallace - President, NBC Local Media Division, from press release

As marketers continue to shift ad dollars from traditional media to online, it’s vital for companies like NBC to take the brand where the people are. Increasingly, that means web and mobile. As newspapers and TV move to build online, the distinction between the two becomes meaningless. Right now local “newspapers” appear to be winning online.

Creating an Engaging Experience While Building a Business

The static web sites of most TV and Radio stations have been eclipsed by the more interactive offerings of newspapers. Perhaps the economic imperative of the dying newspaper industry has forced print publishers bring online innovations to market faster. So the challenge for local media is to build an engaging, imersive, media platform that actually becomes something the community can’t live without - at the same time scaling the user base to a point where the enterprise is economically worthwhile.

What would that platform look like? What key elements would satisfy both the community and the media company? I took that question to my very smart Twitter posse and they came up with some great ideas. Here’s a small sampling:

All very smart ideas from early adopters of social web technology. Smart ideas about the evolution of local media can be found in practice and in theory, but ultimately big media companies are looking for the ones that will generate increased traffic and ad revenue. I do think it is vital for those in charge of any local media initiative to get input from outside the corporate meeting rooms. They should be talking to the local blogging, tech, and social media communities. They should be sponsoring conferences, discussions and meetups with the pioneers of the social web in their local communities.

I strongly feel that media companies need to discover and encourage the brand champions within their own organizations to use social media. While there may be some who grumble about already burdensome workloads - and believe me, TV news is a pretty thankless sausage factory - standing by and hoping that the sales and promotions departments will save careers is not a good career strategy. I’ve discovered that meeting and listening to people on the social web, through platforms like Twitter, blogging, Facebook, and meetups, has enriched my life both personally and professionally. It’s also allowed me to bring the NBC News brand into this space.

Envisioning Local Media

Mel Taylor outlines the key points of a recent speech by former CBS News chief Andrew Heyward. In it, Heyward outlines the current problems with the state of TV news, and discusses some forward-thinking approaches to building succssesful online platforms. Don Dodge, while blogging about newspaper strategy, puts forth ideas that are equally resonant in television’s web efforts. Essentially he says be local, be a marketplace, and be the best local search engine out there. A good example of very useful local search platform is the Boston local search platform Citysqaures.

I think the key to success in transforming local media is to build a platform that people can’t live without. It should be a place where people can connect around ideas and affinities, build their own social netowrk profile, network and create events, have a robust mobile component, and should recommend content and events based on the users profile. People want to share and create content and links. Making that easy and customizable, in a locally relevant way, is key to getting the Facebook generation passionate about local media.The bottom line is, of course, the bottom line. But while media companies have to focus on profits, they should not look at their web presence as a secondary effort, or simply repository for recycled newscast content.

For local media platforms to be successful, they will have to implement imersive, relevant, engaging, and useful experiences for the community. So my assembled readers, how would you build a successful local media platform? What are some good examples of ones you’ve come across?

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In my journey with social media, my blogging, and use of platforms like Twitter and Facebook, I’ve discovered that I’ve become somewhat of a personal micro-media brand. I’ve been able to measure the tangible results of my personal brand building in terms of hard data, and in terms of harder to measure, yet deeply enriching professional and personal connections. The hard data is readily available and demonstrates that listening to the very smart people in this space, and engaging them in meaningful conversation goes a long way in building your brand. By hard data, I’m talking about Google search ranking and analytics, Technorati ranking/authority, blog traffic data, and friends in my circle of influence on various social networking platforms.

That more difficult to define measure of my social media involvement is how it’s enabled me to connect with incredibly smart, visionary, driven entrepreneurs. With fourteen hundred Twitter friends, I have a knowledge base of deeply engaged, early adopters drawn from the ranks of venture capital, PR, marketing, social and traditional media, web strategy, and technology. Social media enabled CC Chapman to connect me to my first professional speaking engagement and meet Geoff Livingston and Valeria Maltoni. People like David Eckoff of Turner Broadcasting cite me as a case study of how to use social media on panels at Streaming Media West. I use Facebook to organize events and affinity groups. Recently, I hosted a breakfast for Seesmic CEO, Loic Lemeur here in Washington, DC. In short, I’ve become relevant in this space. None of this would have been possible without my deep engagement in social media. I see TREMENDOUS value in all of that.

Talking Twitter to marketers, Photo courtesy of CC Chapman

Twitter is my most front-facing social media tool. I post frequently every day, much of it on assignment for NBC News. People tell me they find this behind-the-scenes look into the news fascinating. Many have told me that I put a human face on “the media” that they would otherwise have no real connection with. So I think there is a real value here in being a bridge between the Facebook generation and traditional media. Those type of fuzzy metrics, while interesting, aren’t enough for corporations. They want ROI - and whether you define the “I” as “investment” or as Valeria Maltoni prefers “involvement” - a social media effort should produce measurable results. So it’s not enough that I’m the “crazy uncle” running around NBC evangelizing shiny new social media platforms. Big companies, like my current employer, want real definable results.

Kami Huyse points out that you should begin any social media effort with well defined relational objectives.

One of the things I will stress is the importance of having well-defined objectives. By definition, objectives have to be measurable, “What would you like to see happen and by when as a results of engaging in social media?”- Kami Huyse

John Bell, of Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence practice, helps us further define some of the nuance of social media measurement, exploring the distinction between influence, authority, engagement, and impact.

So, dear readers, how do you measure your social media activity, or in fact, do you measure at all? How are you defining reach, influence, and impact? Frankly, I’m still much of a noob at all of this. At the end of the day, at the core of my being, I’m just a cameraman..right?

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I just booked my travel to the fall Video on the Net Confernence in Boston. I’m very excited because the spring conference in San Jose was a great opportunity for me to connect with key players in this emerging ecosystem. Once again, looks like the best and brightest will be attending this one too. For those of you who missed it, here’s a look a back at VON ‘07, San Jose.

It was fun meeting my neighbors last night and explaining “I have a TV station in my pocket.” That got wonderful stares.
Robert Scoble - Twitter/@scobleizer

Meanwhile, CBS Interactive’s purchase of online show Wallstrip has validated internet video as a vital component of a web content business model. That deal has received a lot of attention, as more and more content creators look to ink agreements with big media companies. So it’s no surprise that once again, VON will be well attended by reps from companies like NBC Universal (my current employer), AOL, Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, Turner Broadcasting, Spark Capital, Akami.. and the list goes on. Video on the Net will be another huge opportunity for me, and for anyone in this space, to network with key industry leaders and get a better idea of what’s on the horizon.

“Digital” media initiatives vs. listening, conversation, and the social web

I often hear about this media comany’s “digital media initiative”, or that this person is in charge of “digital efforts”. If you’re just thinking digital, I think you’re missing the point. I recently attended a seminar at my alma mater American University entitled: PHOTOJOURNALISM: Surviving the Digital Challenge. Overall, there was great discussion, but I heard no mention of engaging audiences in conversation and using video as the starting point. Hosted by the White House News Photographer’s Association and AU’s School of Communication, it was a useful and informative discourse on the imperative for photojournalists to think of themselves more as content creators and less as media workers, and an examination of the internet as a key distribution channel.

Video journalism messiah and media raconteur Michael Rosenblum keynoted, and with no hyperbole, described shifts in media today as world-changing as Gutenburg’s printing press. He and I may not agree on everything, but on this, he’s dead right.

Michael Rosenblum “weighs” the merits of specializaton

While talented, smart media makers can hope to define themselves as bridge-builders between old and new media - integral to a media company charting a course into new territory - I’m personally not banking on it. I’m smack in the middle of this sea change in media, as the diminishing value proposition of a career as network news cameraman thrusts me into the empowering, enriching world of social media. While the “digital challenge” is an important discussion, nothing was really mentioned about video as conversation agent on the Social Web. The “social” part of this is often more of a challenge for traditional media companies. Social requires what VON organizer Chris Brogan deftly outlines as listening.

I think video can and should be an important part of a media company’s SOCIAL web efforts. That’s precisely why I’m attending Video on the Net, to build my personal brand, measure my media strategies with , connect with key industry leaders, and re-connect with the rock stars of internet video.

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Speaking at the Direct Marketing Association of Washington’s “Era of Conversation” conferencePhoto by CC Chapman

Last Thursday, I had the unique pleasure of speaking before a group of marketing executives at the Direct Marketing Association of Washington’s confab in DC. I spoke to one of the many break-out sessions on “new media basics” - fitting for me as there there is SO much I’ve yet to absorb about the social web. In fact, I began by telling my breakout session: “I have no business speaking before a bunch of marketing executives, but..”

From that jumping off point, I discussed my nascent (only been blogging since March of this year), but reasonably engaging blogging efforts, and my use of Twitter as primary tools of social media. Essentially I riffed that if I can do it, you can do it, and basic tools are a good place to start, especially when shifting from less conversational communication. Fortunately for me, and for the rest of the attendees, there was an abundance of thought leadership on wide-ranging strategies for launching social media efforts. Overall I think it’s key to find the tools that are right for you or your organization.

For me, blogging is most rewarding when I leave my posts open-ended, and people WAY smarter than me complete my thoughts in the comments section.  Sure, you can be confrontational, and link-bait to generate traffic, but I like the notion of what Stephen Marino, of Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence practice calls “Return on Involvement”. The day was filled with terrific speakers, and I had the chance to meet some of the brightest minds in this space like keynote speaker Valeria Maltoni (she’s not yet convinced of Twitter so get over to her blog and give her a nudge!), and keynote speaker CC Chapman, who I’ve been eager to meet for some time. CC connected me with Geoff Livingston, another keynote at the conference who really did a great job of blogging the event with the help of Larissa Fair. Geoff pointed out, in support of Marino’s premise, that participation IS marketing.

In my presentation, I demonstrated how Twitter can be used and misused an engagement tool. At one point i called out to all of YOU on Twitter and asked if you’d say hello to the DMAW session. While waiting for some responses to generate, CC Chapman, in what can almost be described as a movie moment, stopped me and said almost chillingly: “Jim.. refresh the page”. You guys had come through!! Imagine if that hadn’t worked ;-). There were no less than 80 immediate responses. (thank you!) I think that aptly demonstrated Twitter’s immediate, conversational, attention directing value. I also pointed out that Team Twitter had  helped shape my presentation in the comments on my blog. (again thank you!)

So despite this being my first ever presentation before a professional group, I think I was able to get people thinking about social media and what tools are right for them. Social media allows us to connect on a deep human level across social, cultural, and corporate barriers in a way we never could before. Conversations no longer happen from the top down. More importantly they are no longer controlled by corporations. Media that aren’t conversational or social are becoming less and less relevant. Funny that I felt like odd man out speaking at this event. At the end of the day I’m a network news cameraman, not a social media consultant. Ogilvy’s John Bell advises on his blog:

Spark ideas by mixing up odd-fellows and odd exepriences. Oh, and let go of the reins a bit.
John Bell

I think that’s fitting here. Social media enables the exchange of good ideas and allows the the best ones to take root and propagate, creating value, involvement, and engagement. So maybe that’s why I was invited. I want to thank Donna Tschiffely, Executive Director of DMAW, for bringing this all together. I hope i get a chance to do this again soon.

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Track 1 - Sponsored by Executive Biz
New Media Basics: Hammers brass tacks into some of the more popular social media tactics. Forget the exotic. We’re talking about the everyday activity your organization needs right now to enjoy immediate success in the emerging social media/web 2.0 elements.
from DMAW website

This is where I need YOUR HELP. Do YOU think I’m using social media successfully? If so, why? How can big companies better use social media? What are important points that I should draw from our collective experience in social media? As always, your comments here MAKE this blog. I’m looking forward to your insights! Thanks.

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“It’s been a great year with Amanda — a great experiment for both of us. We thank her for her many contributions and know that she’s about to embark on new endeavors and expect there will be times in the future that we can again work together.”
ABCNews.com statement

I wonder if the news that Amanda Congdon and ABC have chosen to part ways isn’t emblematic of the diminished value of “celebrity” in media. Congdon, whose efforts with former Rocketboom partner Andrew Michael Baron pioneered the emergence of succesful new media brands, deftly positioned herself as a crossover talent after her split with the Rocketboom creator. Big media took notice and soon she was videoblogging for ABC News. While that relationship may have never been a perfect fit for either party, it was notable that big media had validated “new” media. I think part of the problem that big media still struggles with is that in many respects, they simply try to ape and replicate what is happening in emerging social media platforms. For instance, on a number of occasions, I’ve heard television colleagues talk of making things “look webby”

Talents aside, it’s not simply an Amanda Congdon or Joanne Colan that make Rocketboom cool, it’s the fact that the entire experience is built around participation and involvement. They are simply the facitlitator or custodians of community. Their “celebrity” is merely a net effect of the interactivity of the show. I don’t know whether ABC may have failed to take this fully into account, or simply wasn’t able to replicate that participation, but it appears the end result was an experience that wasn’t entirely what fans had hoped.

Katie Couric in Iraq

Celebrity’s fickle nature isn’t limited to the new media crossover talent. Just look at Katie Couric’s less than stellar transition to CBS News. I was recently with her in Iraq as she was reporting from the region. Despite her notoriety, and the timeliness of the reporting, the CBS Evening News tied for its lowest ratings (5.5 million viewers) since she took the helm. Now, CBS has given all kinds of explanations for the shows lackluster performance since she took the job, but in my mind they made a bet on her celebrity and it simply isn’t panning out.

I think we’re entering an era where celebrity in media is of far less value then the quality and authenticity of content. There is unlimited choice in how we get news, information and entertainment. We seek content that speaks to us, engages us, and gives us avenues for interactivity and participation. We want to speak with, not simply listen to the messenger. There are so many avenues now for robust discourse, that one-way media is simply having a hard time getting through. As I always say, none of this is zero sum, but certainly the shifts are pretty obvious. There is tremendous opportunity for established media to learn from emerging media and vice versa.

There are some examples of these disparate forms of media drawing on best practices learned from one another. Big media companies are are empowering their workers with new storytelling tools. My current employer, NBC News, has embraced blogs and video blogging and is making plans to do more. Just this past week they featured the enterprising work of my friend and colleague Amna Nawaz. Amna produced this web-only video about the under-reported story of land mine victims in Columbia.

Young victims of landmines
MSNBC.COM has such a thirst for original, unique first-person content that they encourage everyone to produce original video and blogs, not just re-purposed broadcast stories for the web. I’ve even gotten in on the act.

Just as old media are taking cues from new, emerging media are drawing from the experince of their corporate counterparts. Take the webisode drama “35″. “35″ is a dramatic web video series that is shot with three cameras and switched and fed live via Ustream to the web. To me the strength of this project is that it combines the ubiquity ot the internet with the spontaneity and unpredictability of live TV. “35″ was recently featured in a Wall Street Journal article, so once again we see mainstream media taking notice of creative, upstart, emerging media. “35″ runs from September 19th through the 30th, live at 9PM EDT. The show has a post show chat where fans talk with producers.

Who knows where all of this is going, but from my vantage point this is at once daunting as it is exhilarating. But for someone who makes a living in media, it’s vital to keep on top of trend. Seeing what resonates with audiences, what do they ignore, what engages them -these will be the measures of success in this dizzyingly changing media landscape. This seems clear though, treat your community, your audience as a valuable partner in your media and youll likely have a winner. Celebrity in and of itself is of limited value.

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