On Frozen Blog

This past Monday’s New York Times evaluated Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and his eye-opening appearance last Sunday on ‘Meet the Press.’ Colbert, actor, comedian, provocateur, fledgling candidate apparently for the White House, appeared as Tim Russert’s guest, and Russert was in on the joke. Except, in the Times’ insightful view, it wasn’t so much a joke. Also in Washington this week, the Washington Times delivered a contemporary overview of the role that hockey bloggers increasingly are playing in media generally. The two news events, I’d argue, offer fresh opportunities to dissect the ongoing evolution of media.

Colbert is a faux presidential candidate. And yet the powerful irony in his ‘Meet the Press’ appearance was that in many respects it was more authentic than what typically is carried off on that program or its in-kind Sunday morning competition. That was precisely Colbert’s point; he’s reputed to have said, “I am far realer than [Kansas Senator and until recently presidential candidate] Sam Brownback.” He is. More: he’s every bit as plausible a presidential candidate as Brownback or Chris Dodd or Joe Biden.

Colbert wants to remind us of the inherent phoniness of contemporary American politics and media. And those who rise up in defense of Old Media vis a vis new media’s challenge to it don’t fully appreciate, it seems to me, either the extent of the longstanding, widespread dissatisfaction with the media status quo — chronicled now over decades — or the versatility and real-time impact brought about by the new competition.

As a culture, didn’t we dispense with the mythology of press “independence” about a generation ago? Whether your target is Katie Couric or Dan Rather or Bob Novak, the delusional quaint notion that an entire workforce of information gatekeepers is somehow filterless, dispensing developments through ideology-free lenses, seems now of the world-is-flat sensibility. The upshot of which is: in chronicling the highs, lows, and general do-nothings of both the Clinton and Bush administrations of the past 15 years, who’s had a greater impact in our culture, Matt Drudge or the Chicago Tribune? When significant legislation is introduced and debated on Capitol Hill, how many Americans believe the network or big city paper Hill correspondent and his or her 900-word file or 120-second-segment-soundbite captures the majority of the bill’s impact? (Or even a sliver.) What happens to a bill — like say this past spring’s Senate’s immigration package (800 pages) — when an army of bloggers, some with law degrees, goes through it with a fine-tooth comb? The answer: K Street — and Old Media conventional wisdom — becomes confounded.

The next question is, why would you have much if any deference to a dying medium? Polite respect perhaps, but deference? Another question is one of philosophical pragmatism: in light of rapidly developing technology and the democratizing quality of media it engenders, why would you think that a lone set of eyes and fingers on a keypad ought to be the definitive representative of a news event? And while with big news items on line there’s always initially a lot of heat and noise, rather quickly the wheat gets separated from the chaff.

The cold hard reality for big-city editors and bureau chiefs is that with each passing week more and more Americans aged 15-40 are turning to alternative media to get their hard, soft, and pretty much everything in between kind of news. For better or for worse, it’s been a steady diet of Jon Stewart, Matt Drudge, Stephen Colbert, the Daily Kos . . . and Kissing Suzy Kolber.

This past Friday night, on my most recent visit to Verizon Center, I made two notes about the dynamics of the contemporary sports press box. There is on display there, nightly, a stunning dichotomy. On the one hand, you have individual beat reporters from individual Old Media outlets pecking away on their machines an hour before the game, actually erecting the infrasctructure of the stories they’ll file in a few hours. They’ll pause and make small-talk occasionally with their peers, but in general it’s a tightly scripted environment affording precious little significant reflection time. Most of these reporters are actually writing while the game action is taking place — and necessarily not watching it.

At another end of press row one can commonly find a cadre of bloggers, all of whom technically are forbidden from blogging in “real time.” Instead, they are rapturously engaged in the on-ice proceedings . . . and with one another. There is heavy traffic of real-time visual note-taking and sharing, analysis and speculation. Often I will arrive at Verizon Center with a single file idea and depart with four, by virtue of the savvy blogger exchanges I am immersed in, particularly between periods.

But there is more: like all others Friday night, I packed up my gear at the game’s concluding horn and made my way down to the players’ rooms. The Capitals’ captain had appeared to be injured quite badly. I wanted to get official word of Clark’s condition as fast as possible, and get it up on the ‘Net within minutes. Dmitry Chesnokov and I waited in a hallway for Nate Ewell with the word. It took some minutes, but we got it: stitches and not anything truly awful. My computer was packed up, and were I a lone blogger here I’d have had to wait for a work station and an outlet of some sort to type up my finding. Instead I relayed the news via cell phone to an OFB colleague, who was seated near his computer at home.

But there is more: there is an archetype to the filings of Old Media (”the game file”) at games. Oftentimes I determine mine six or seven minutes into a game. Sometimes I play it straight, sometimes I veer off on creative tangents. And in this respect I’m pretty much like every other hockey blogger in town.

Friday night I had no editor to wait upon for publication clearance back in any news room. The point here isn’t to toot our horn but instead to delineate a bit the technology that is driving the media revolution. On Saturday new and old media alike simultaneously received word of Alexander Semin’s new contract. Who do you suppose had word of it up first? (Answer: blogger Mike Vogel.)

Much like Colbert’s jarring intrusion on Tim Russert’s set last Sunday hockey bloggers in D.C. have uprooted the conventions of hockey coverage in town. And I don’t think we’ve even gotten to the fun stuff yet.