The Medium, The Message

The New York Times’ David Carr sees hope in the evolution of online news media.

“Blogs and new-media sites are cartoonishly written off as places where people write up the soup they just ate, but in the past year, many sites have added muscle and resources to the pursuit of news,” he wrote in Sunday’s paper. “Everyone knows about the reporting assets and influence of Politico, but you know things have changed when Gawker, the attitudinous Manhattan media blog, is hiring the kind of reporters who pick up the phone. …

“And just as new media have absorbed the enduring values of traditional media — developing sources, making phone calls [as noted earlier] — so more established players are adopting the tools of the insurgency. For instance, traditional media outlets are not waiting for the much-hyped Apple tablet to land next year before coming up with content that might soar on the device.”

“The long-in-the-tooth technologies still have plenty of life in them,” he says, citing successes in newspapers, TV and even among laid-off journalists.