Wednesday, December 27, 2006

The joke's on the old media

Last night I was watching the Milwaukee news on WTMJ, and they kept teasing at a new rap song about keeping Midwest Airlines locally owned. I waited, expecting to see something of moderate production value by someone in the local music scene. I was disappointed, even with my very low expectations. It turned out this new new rap video was a terrible little rap cut on a cheap video camera by two people who had probably never rapped before in their life, even to practice this song they were taping. It was clearly a YouTube or Google video deal. For some reason WTMJ decided this was worthy of showing a clip of on air.

The joke is clearly on the 'old media'. The rap WTMJ showed was barely deserving of a few hits on whatever video site it was on. Not all new media material is deserving of a wide audience. Just because a certain piece of content exists in the internet does not mean it is worthwhile. WTMJ didn't seem to 'get' that key aspect of the new media yet. Yes, user driven content does create a lot of interesting new view points, but the key is only the cream rises to the top.

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