Boomerang

Growing up, the fatherly voices of Walter Cronkite, Ted Koppel and Peter Jennings mesmerized and warmed me. No matter how shocking, sad or maddening the news of the day was, their polished, trusted delivery made everything okay. It felt good to know they were on it: uncovering every detail and source, asking hard questions, and reporting the story fairly and accurately.

As the mass media landscape continues to shift, the good old days of a mass audience glued to national nightly newscasts have been replaced by a wild west of “Dot TV” channels — a handful of which now reach audiences that rival those of national news broadcasts.

But in the famous words of the great Webmaster himself, Spider-Man: “With great power also comes great responsibility.” These new dot TVs have some big shoes to fill. Journalism is a pillar of our free and democratic society, and I’m not convinced that all newcomers feel they are beholden to a shared code of ethics, and the same level of rigorous reporting of the Jennings era.

I know there are many who share my concern and excitement about the new rules of engagement that are emerging. My friend Tom Foremski has been tracking the topic on his blog for some time now. For instance, several months ago he suggested that media sites should provide a way for sources to comment back on posts – which came to life last week on Google News.

There have been other compelling experiments lately, such as the recent CNN-Citizen Tube presidential debate. Many media pundits commented that some of the most hard-hitting, relevant questions for presidential candidates came from citizens’ video questions. Our client Friction.tv has also recently formed partnerships with Channel Five and Al Jazeera. If an informed citizenry at large can collectively rise to the challenge, the honorable profession of journalism can prevail in a new form.