Social Media is definately the future!

It should not surprise anyone that I've been inspired by another TED talk.  I mean, every talk on the site is something worth watching at least once.  This one is about social media.  I have been following Andrew Sullivan on his incredible coverage of the protests in Iran, and I have been watching the #iranelection tag on twitter too, and I'm a firm believer that CNN doesn't stand a chance against this type of media.  Sure, the video isn't in HD, and there isn't a reporter editing the footage and choosing which scenes to show you... it's just what is happening.  The real coverage.  It worked in China for the earthquake... it was used to make sure that the schools to replace those that collapsed were actually built to code... and it's the only media coming out of Iran while all the news stations are being cut out of the loop.

     I know you aren't going to get the best quality journalism from this news, but you aren't going to get good quality journalism until after the issue is resolved... the only thing that TV networks can ever offer you is coverage, and any monkey with a camera can do that.  I don't mean to say camera men aren't talented because finding the right shot isn't easy, but most of the difference between a camera man and some ordinary person is that the camera man usually has better equipment.

     This leads me to my next realization, the future of print media.  So, we all know the newspapers are having trouble re-acclimating to the digital world.  When newspapers move to the internet, every article has to carry it's own weight... the atomic unit of sales changed from an entire paper, to an individual articles.  Social media is really good a producing raw unedited footage of what is happening, and initial public reactions, however traditional media has this ability to censer the story, check the sources, and produce good quality media that requires investment to produce.  We must not loose that.

   My question, how do we combine our social media and traditional media into a unit that works together?  I like the concept of free licenses for social media (free as in freedom to reuse or remix the content for non-commercial or at least non-profit use), but the real question is how do you put a price on or handle purchasing licenses to the media?  I feel the creator has more right to profit from their work than some media outlet using the story to attract viewers or sell papers.

Anyway, there is a lot that can be said for the way the world is shifting to the internet.  Blogs, news aggregation, youtube, cellphone cameras, and personal video cameras are changing the way we get out news.  Which I think is fine.  I think that spreading the information is very important, but there is something to be said for the people who come in after the story is over.

The people who follow up the story with quality journalism (the who, why, what happened, and how it turned out.)  The story that is documented for the historians to record, and the story our descendants will learn in school.  We need to make sure that someone checked the score board and made sure they weren't mislead by someone with an agenda.

So, embrace the digital revolution, but don't forget your roots.  Support quality journalism (like PBS.)