ELECTRIFYING THE CONVENTIONS

ELECTRIFYING THE CONVENTIONS

Fellow blogger Susan Mernit [1] sent a pointer to an item she'd posted recently, and also an update that appears on her blog [2] right now.

The idea is to open up the election and convention converage, use the electronic connected media to spread the word. She's done an excellent job with her suggestion of how various existing media outlets could combine with electronic connected media to create a potent newsforce, as well as streams of information and coverage that could be inclusive, dynamic, and introduce some newthink into how the same old same old is covered.

From Susan Mernit's blog:

ALL news entities with Internet Archive and Creative Commons licensing

Why not create an open source media archive for the 2004 election? What if all the major news players decided to cooperate with the Internet Archive and build a multimedia archive for the 2004 election season? And grant a Creative Commons license for use of the materials?

In other areas [3] there has been some discussion to the effect that the conventions are no longer a newsworthy event -- the outcome is already a given; there will be no votes of substance or behind-the-scenes dealmaking or decision brokering that might have any major impact, much less be at all newsworthy.

My comment (which you can see here [4]) is this: despite the foregone conclusion of each convention, the events remain newsworthy. The major media coverage (and expense of energy, allocation of resources) justifies the conventions as grand scale news moments, and rightly so. Despite knowing the candidates and the slate in advance of the meetings, these are the quadrennial meetings, the coming together of all the major players in each party, as well as numerous secondary party players. News will emerge from both conventions, although it may have more to do with local or stateside information than that of a more national scale.

Further, the major news outlets are going to sell a ton of advertising wrapped in and around the conventions. Neither the news organizations nor the advertisers are acting stupidly. TV, Radio, Newspapers, the web -- all of these media will have major coverage and it will be sponsored.

The bottom line is that it is a high-interest news moment when either party has its convention. Susan Mernit makes soe excellent suggestions for inclusion of web-based communications outlets to increase their profile as well as their reach --with some impact and with an eye on dynamic presentation and dissemination of the events.

One more quote, and other of the suggestions from Susan's blog:

Why doesn't a news-focused portal site team up with one of the new web-based newsreader services to offer a customized and branded newsreader customized with political feeds--a My Yahoo or MSN or My AOL for the elections?

You can always count on good reading over on Susan Mernit's blog [1]. This is just one example. And, of course, you can find a link to it [1] over on the right-hand column.

As Distributed Communications prosper, expand, develop and morph into more useful and user-friendly entities, we will see more of the sort of information (et al) dissemination that Susan writes of.

The majority of my professional career has been in communications, in various forms. The greatest opportunities lie in using connectivity to grow and develop. Broadband is more a way of life by the day, and connectivity becomes portable, ubiquitous, and increasingly more reasonably priced.

We are on the cusp of a major change in how media, information, news and entertainment are distributed. Changes, expansion, and new generations of users already having adapted and accepted what are now considered new forms of distribution will mean all sorts of new frontiers.

Blogs are a beginning. A scant few bloggers, mostly well-connected (read that in old paradigm connotation) and A-list types, will herald the coming of bloggers as reporters (posters? updaters?) at the Democratic convention.

WiFi and the connected networks, alog with aggregators spreading the word of newly posted items will bring an immediacy as well as a specificity of coverage to the convention. Bloggers often have a point of view, a slant, an attitude or special area of interest, and sometimes that goes so far as to define the blog.

Readers of the various blogs and their point of view will have new insights to view. This, in contrast to the great
centralized middle of interest to a mass audience (as in network and major newspaper coverage) will be the initial difference.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Exciting times are ahead.