The New Media Paradigm, spelled out

Yes that's right--it's time to play with abstract models.

In the right corner, representing the best web-adaptation of the old media model, I give you...the Washington Post.

In the left corner, representing but one useful example of a functional system in the new media environment, I give you...Wikipedia.

Let's begin by examining the most recent article in the Post on the scandalous behavior of former representative Mark Foley. In order to understand the context of this publication, one has to understand that it is in competition with yesterday's article on the subject. For you see, the news business is, a the word implies, all about what is new. The goal is to provide the latest information as constantly as possible. This made sense when people were limited in their sources of information to what was printed on paper. You wanted to get the next paper out as soon as possible so that anything that had become outdated would be corrected.

In an internet environment, however, it has become something of a farce. You get articles that may or may not analyse some new point on an issue, but more likely they say the same thing in mostly the same way. They say it in repetition because that is the only way they know how to convey information--updating every day even if there isn't all that much more to say. The truly laughable extremes, of course, come into play when CNN or Fox News presents you with a superb video of Michael Jackson's now vacant car for hours on end. Should anything change, you will know it. Should nothing change, you will provided with the opportunity to see every bit of that lack of change in depth.

Now, to Wikipedia. Not only is there an article on Mark Foley, there is an article specifically on this recent scandal. The only time when a new article becomes necessary is when a specific subject becomes a disproportionately large gathering point for information, as in the case of the scandal as a part of Foley's overall life.

There will not be a new article every day. There is one Mark Foley article, and one Foley Scandal article. If either is broken up, it will be purely for organizational purposes, to make the information more readily accessible to a wide audience. Wikipedia's open-edit system allows for these articles to be continually updated, and so there is no need to update via new articles. Readers seeking information need only search for "Mark Foley" and instead of being presented with a plethora of articles, they will be instantly redirected to the main article. If they are looking for information on the scandal in particular, it will be easy to find from there.

But what of blogs? If old media is about constantly putting out new articles, are not blogs, those emblems of the new media, the ultimate version of this model? Churning out post after post, often on the same topics?

The differences in that aspect of these models is a subject for exploration at another time. But I would argue that the role of the old posts in a blog are far more important than old articles are in a newspaper.

From Mister Snitch:

The long-tail blogger is the rarest of successful breeds. This style requires consistent blogging over a long period of time (hence the rarity in a fairly new medium). As we have noted in previous posts, blogging is heavily favored by search engines in the current Internet cultural environment. A classic long-tail blogger such as Dustbury gets a very respectable audience (currently approaching 1,000 unique visits a day) because the site has been commenting on popular culture, steadily and succinctly, for over nine and a half years. A look at Charles' site stats tells the story: Out of every 1,000 hits, about 70% come to the site's front page or a current post. The remainder are links that trickle in - one, two, three at a time - for archived posts.

Experimenting with the relationship of Google searches to blog posts has very much altered the style of blogging here at Sophistpundit. In a traditional medium, monopolizing the print with a series on finite mathematics would be considered a move in the direction of utter annihilation of the reader base. Yet at a moment of relatively light blogging, Sophistpundit is averaging over 30 visits a day, the vast majority coming from internet searches and many of those searches relating to combinatorial equations.

The point here is that while many feel that we are entering the age of the short attention span, I believe that we are in fact heading in the opposite direction. That the important things will be the ones that last, the ones found to be useful in the most searches, the articles most contributed to on a wiki.

In other words, I believe that we are moving into an age that will cherish that which remains relevant over time rather than that which can report the newest thing before anyone else. The latter may never disappear, but I look forward to seeing more of the former to provide much needed context for new information.

End posting of rampant speculation...now.