Photo: Chris Metcalf

I got an email from a friend the other day who was asking for advice on digital TVs and what her options will be after next February, when digital tuners become mandatory. In answering her, I wrote, “We have cable and all of our equipment is analog. I don’t know what we’ll do yet. Most of the time that I used to spend watching TV, I now spend online. I don’t think the TV’s been on in over a week. Maybe we’ll just ditch it.”

Can a high speed Internet connection actually replace traditional media? I think it can, if you choose to consume media differently you did in the old days (up until about five years ago). For example, when I watch a news broadcast on network TV, I get a well prepared, professionally presented summary of the day’s news, complete with pundit commentary. However, I am often aware that the stories they’re reporting on are out of date, from having followed the same stories online. More importantly, I’ve read, watched or listened to many differing opinions on those stories during the course of the day, viewpoints that even a high quality TV program (and goodness knows there are few enough of those) leaves out of their coverage.

Many people question the quality of information available online. In this area, the gap is quickly shrinking between online media (primarily bloggers) and traditional media. Mark Glasser wrote in his blog Mediashift, on PBS.org:

The largest mainstream news sites, such as Washingtonpost.com and MSNBC.com, are brimming with blogs, usually run by reporters, editors and producers who now write more frequently and with a more personal style than in a typical news report. Simultaneously, independent blogs are doing more reporting, breaking more news and hiring former journalists to staff their publications. While the New York Times was hiring Brian Stelter and distributing the Freakonomics blog, the tabloid blog network Gawker Media was hiring seasoned journalists like Owen Thomas for Valleywag and changing its mastheads to include “managing editors,” “associate editors,” “reporters” and even an “editor at large” (on Defamer).

Anyone who still believes that bloggers are one breed and journalists are another has been living in a cave since roughly 2002.

There is also increasing crossover between mainstream media and the blogosphere. Erick Schonfeld moved from Time, Inc. to the staff of the blog TechCrunch six month ago. He writes in a recent post:

The worlds of blogging and journalism are colliding and I want to get some thoughts down on this transition before I forget what the old world was like or feel too comfortable in the new one.

…

There is something about blogging—the immediacy, the give and take, the point of view—that helps it compete with traditional media for attention. And we don’t want to lose that. We like to speculate, argue, and debate—sometimes in ways that traditional journalists may think is unseemly. That’s okay, as long as our readers keep coming back for more.

I think we will keep coming back for more. One of the reasons that I want to help people understand how to use the Internet is that I find the place so darned interesting. As David Weinberger puts it:

The world is far more interesting than the mainstream media have let on. Blogging is all about discovering just how interesting the world really is.

I think I’ll tell my friend to put whatever money she was going to spend on her TV into a fast broadband connection and a laptop.

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