What Michael Jackson's death taught me about old and new media
Judette Coward-Puhglisi
Michael Jackson is dead!
Six seconds later I corrected my facebook post
Judette Coward-Puglisi at 5:57pm June 25
I should have said Twitter reports are announcing that he has died. According to the streams its cardiac arrest. Have not seen major news organisation announce his death.
Maria C. Mohammed at 5:57pm June 25
TMZ is saying he is dead
Judette Coward-Puglisi at 6:02pm June 25
Don't find TMZ credible though. Let's wait and see. We know he was rushed to hospital. Know paramedics state a cardiac attack.
That's an actual conversation that happened in real time between my friend, Maria Mohammed and I, moments after the first streams from Twitter had the words 'Michael Jackson' as a trending topic.
For those of you not yet in Twitterverse, when you're a trending topic it means that the world is buzzing with something new about you. When the buzz on Michael Jackson (MJ) started, I thought it was just another concert announcement, turns out it was so much more.
The the King of Pop was gone.
Maybe it was my journalism training (to second source information and make sure your sources are accurate ) but TMZ ‘s online story was not credible enough for me and I waited for CNN and BBC to make the confirmation before reposting the news of Jackson’s death on my facebook page.
Time magazine had a brilliant article today on why my initial instinct was the correct one. According to the article: (and I hope you’ve clicked the link to read it)...
“Jackson's death was the first of its kind to occur in the new media world, where news can come from anywhere and gets passed around the Web on Twitter feeds and Facebook updates and story comments with millions of individuals volunteering their particular insight or spin or emotion. Instead of a few media monoliths speaking for us all, Jackson's fans, detractors and impartial observers all spoke for themselves. This story should have provided a blueprint for how new media has overthrown old. But what it actually did was shine a white hot spotlight on the myths of the current media landscape.”
I agree.
A week after Jackson's death, he may still the No. 1 and top trending topics on Twitter but it was to MTV that I turned when I wanted to get the complete retrospective of his musical genius. Not Twitter.
And facebook may have strained under the weight of the volume of searches on the very evening of the MJ announcement but it was NBC, trustworthy and familiar like an old friend who scored big with the most comprehensive reports of MJ’s life and times. And then when actor Jeff Goldblum became a trending topic on Twitter and I feared the worse, it was CNN that I watched to for reassurance that he too had not passed.
Time magazine surmised it the best.
"What the story of Jackson's demise might have actually proved is that each type of media —new, social, mainstream — has a part in the news ecosystem and one does not replace the other. The new media provides the speed, the social media provides the emotion, the mainstream media provides the heft. And Goldblum, well, he brings the weird."
It is low tide. A huge white seagull glides over the blue island waters and settles down gently, taking up his post at the mouth of the bay. Standing guard on his thin elegant legs, he picks off the trespassers who naively swim too close to the shore. When he is full and the water begins to intrude again he takes off, a large flap of wings arcing over the bay. 
It seems that Fortune 100 CEO’s just aren’t into social media. New research out today from the Web site 
I have a picture of my friend Brian fishing on the lakes of New Hampshire in New England and each time I have to write a business proposal I take it out of my photo album, pinch out the creases and place it on my desk. 

