FOUR years ago when George W. Bush was re-elected president, there was no YouTube and MySpace was a mere one-year-old.
Those were innocent days of yore when the morning ritual is a mug of coffee with the newspaper.
The caffeine has endured but, in the race to the White House now, it is a different ball game for the newspapers.
Gone were the days when the front page of The New York Times (NYT) would grab people by the collar for three days, said Jim VandeHei, a co-founder of political news site Politico.
“Consequential journalism isn’t what it used to be,” he said.
The Politico itself is a testament of how the way things are now. It was started in January last year by a team of newsmen from publications such as The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Time.
With almost four million visitors a month, it has become what the NYT described as essential reading in Washington.
“Extraordinary influential,” said CNN anchor Campbell Brown.
At a TimeWarner Summit on “Politics 2008” in New York City co-hosted by Time and CNN, VandeHei explained that readers now processed news differently.
“Journalism isn’t about writing a number of paragraphs and giving the background. People want info; and now, anybody can drive the news, not just the big cable or networks,” he noted.
The focus, he said, was in getting the news out in “real” time.
This meant that reporters could build up their own signature. Viewers would say “I want to watch ABC to see what Mark Halperin has to say.” (Halperin, who is Time senior political analyst, appears on ABC as commentator).
As Time managing editor Richard Stengel put it: “Halperin’s blog €“ “The Page” €“ has become an indispensable, 24/7 bookmark for the people.”
Blogging, Stengel said, was democratic.
“It involves people who are otherwise not involved,” he said
These days, every American voter had almost same access as the journalist. he said, adding that consumption habits have altered.
“A news posting at 3am could elicit 50 responses within minutes,” said VandeHei. There is no longer such a thing called news cycle.
“News psycho” was more like it, as someone joked.
WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan pointed how fragmented things were now.
“We are niched to death,” said Noonan.
“I miss the old, boring ways. Now, you can get your own blog and create your own reality.”
All these up-to-the-minute news, however, raises other questions.
“I wonder what it has done to political discourse; our cycles are so short now,” Stengel said.
And the viral lies, too, which spreads around without verification.
Citing an example, Brown said she was astonished that people still believed Barack Obama was a Muslim.
Why then, Brown asked, had the mainstream media become such a dirty word in this political campaign?
VandeHei felt that the media must “pull back the curtain to show how we do the things we do. The media has to become more transparent.”
As for Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter, he said the media should strive for the truth, not so much about providing balanced coverage.
“The way this country is set up is that you always have to give equal time and weight to every opinion; example, even when someone says there is no global warming,” he said.
Forget, too, about separating reporting and commenting.
“Those days are behind us,” said VandeHei.
“Why are political reporters so interesting when you talk to them over a beer, but so boring when you read them?” he asked.
“People want to know what political reporters are thinking.”
Mark Penn, who was senior
strategist for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, pointed out that more than ever the credibility of the media continued to slide.
“Clinton has often been told to let her hair down. But she always had to be careful as things tend to get blown off. If she tells a joke, there will be 10 psychologists analysing what she meant,” he said.
“She couldn’t even make a joke.”
What then, he asked, was the role of the press? To him, the media would merely go after the news of the day.
As CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley pointed out, the press had not scrutinised Obama’s record as a community leader.
“Do any of us know what exactly he did as a community organiser? He is running on that,” she said.
“What had been his accomplishments?”
There is, unfortunately, a standardisation of coverage where the same news angle got repeated countlessly (think of the stories about Republican vice-president nominee Sarah Palin tripping at her TV interviews).
“Look at newspapers, news sites and cable €“ people are talking about the same thing,” VandeHei said.
This is a YouTube election, no doubt. Barack Obama’s 37-minute speech on race in March has been viewed five million times, making it among the most-watched political videos ever.
Yes, the game has changed but it also means a golden age is here for the media. A more niched audience could mean greater chance of success.
With such a huge consumption of news, “the question is: how do you monetise it?” said Stengel.
As Carter pointed out, people do not want to read 1,000 words on their BlackBerry. They want to look as beautiful pictures, too.
CNN/US president Jonathan Klein said that when the Internet expanded 10 years ago, people thought that would be a major threat to CNN. But cnn.com had remained a top news site, he noted.
The point was to live up to be a trusted name whether online or TV, he said.
“You have to be a brand with reputation,” he added.
Breaking stories is something of a “can’t do without it” for the people, he said.