The real revolution of new media

Stowe Boyd and Chris Heuer are having a little debate about the purity of social media press releases which I spouted off about earlier this evening. Chris was kind enough to come by and comment. I started to leave a 2nd reply to his comment and thought the point deserved its own post.

While discussing the proper term for the current media revolution Chris pointed out what he thought was new about new media:

For now, the new new part is that it is more social, it is about participating in the conversation digitally if you will, so this is where I have ended up on social media being the term personally.

While I agree the conversation is important to new media I don’t think that is what has caused this revolution. The really important new part is that anyone with a computer, or cell phone and an internet connection can through their own effort become an influential voice in their community, in their state, even all over the world with virtually no investment.

It used to take a whole lot of money to communicate on the massive scale that is now available.

That is the root of this revolution, not the chatting. Millions of people who used to yell at the television, or radio, or think to themselves when reading a story or an op ed piece in their local newspaper or favorite magazine, “I could write a better story than that” or  “why didn’t they ask that politician this question” can actually write their own story and have it read by people all over the world, even read  by those very same main stream journalists they yelled at through the TV, even interview that celebrity, or politician themselves; ask the questions they always wanted answered.

And you know what much of the time they are better stories, they are more provocative and well researched opinions, they ask better interview questions.

That is the revolution of new media.