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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Monday, July 31st, 2006 - 6 Comments »

When New Media Breaks The Story

Variety kind of went out of its way last night to suggest that they and other Traditional Media were taking the high road on the Gibson story as it came to light on Friday. The truth is, they got their asses kicked and showed that they could fall even farther behind as they took the weekend off.
“When that line between news and gossip gets too blurry to see clearly, relying on the old rules seems to fall somewhere between anti-competitive and moldy. But when two stories like this, which really do seem to be news, are reported first and exclusively by a gossip website, Traditional Media needs to learn to just clear themselves of their biases against the internet and move along on the story as they would on a story broken by one of their own. And then, they have to learn not to overreact to being late to the party.”
Where is it all leading?
The full THB column

6 Comments »

6 Responses to “When New Media Breaks The Story”

  1. eug says:
    July 31, 2006 at 1:03 pm

    good points Dave…clearly the traditional Hollywood media simply isn’t set up to handle a “story” like this that emerges in an off-hour. nor have they shown a desire to adapt. (yet, Defamer ignored the story until this morning)
    seems like there was a lot of “wait and see” going on… and then the old media essentially reacted to the new, as you say.
    for the record, Anne’s RiskyBiz blog is among my favorite places for breaking Hollywood news, information and commentary (right up there will MCN). i don’t really bother with the Hollywood trades until the end of the day, for the wrap-up and sometimes the bigger picture.
    personally, i first became aware of the Gibson news on Saturday morning when my RSS Reader found Anne’s post about the situation. so i went to GoogleNews to discover what he actually said (and i’ve since added TMZ to my RSS reader).
    interestingly, i have “in the know” friends and colleagues in the biz who didn’t know a thing about all this until it was reported by the “legit” media… maybe Internet access is rare in The Hamptons?

  2. jeffmcm says:
    July 31, 2006 at 2:45 pm

    Defamer had the story not long after it happened, on Friday.

  3. David Poland says:
    July 31, 2006 at 3:50 pm

    Yes… Defmaer linked to AP, which got the story from TMZ.com

  4. eug says:
    July 31, 2006 at 3:52 pm

    sorry, i should have clarified…. they had the drunk driving news, but didnt update the story when it blew up over the weekend… they waited till this morning to tackle that… and i have to say, i loved their round-up today…

  5. THX5334 says:
    July 31, 2006 at 5:20 pm

    Yeah, It’s pretty clear that Lisanti and Seth don’t work on the weekends.
    Also, it was interesting to see the story on local channel 7 news. They properly credited TMZ for breaking the story (Where does Television news fit in terms of Old and New Media Dave? At least in this case?)
    The other thing of interest is the nice corporate offices of TMZ in the background during the Levin interview. Hilarious.
    Quite the different image than what I imagine the Defamer offices to look like:
    I always imagine Lisanti or Seth blogging in their boxers from their apartment, bong by thier side, with Denton calling every now and again for something.
    I think what’s bugging you Dave, is now that the world has gotten smaller with technology. There is this immature attitude on all sides of the press that EVERYONE has to cover the same story, once it breaks, or they’re not going to sell papers, get ratings, or be part of some journalism cool crowd.
    And now that the world has gotten smaller, we pretty much have all the info already once the story breaks from the first couple of sources. The barrage of coverage is just not needed.
    It’s just like when you work a junket as an actor/filmmaker and you get the same questions from all over the world. And you’re just thinking “Fuck guy, the same 40 people before you asked me the same things, and only ONE of you has to report it for everyone to see. Come up with something ELSE!”
    How long will it take media to learn that one website is all that’s needed for everyone to get all the story; and that there’s plenty of news in every facet of the world that not every outlet needs to cover the same 5 stories because someone else broke them?

  6. THX5334 says:
    July 31, 2006 at 5:23 pm

    I should add, the thing that would be of interest to the Gibson story that the MCN players could add, I know I would want to read is any/all op-ed piece from the MCN players on the reality of this situation for Gibson. Not just how the story affects the media, but what does someone like Ray Pride (or whomever) think of something like this?
    I guess the point I am trying to make, is sometimes reading someone’s opinon can be just as enlightening as reading the facts of the story.

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