No Longer a Bystander

          On the night of May 2^nd as the U.S. military raided the compound of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a local man, Sohaib Athar tweeted what he saw from his nearby home.  His was the only live report of the raid.  Twenty years ago, most of us were innocent bystanders, today we are on scene reporters.   

          Just as the music industry a few years ago went into a precipitous decline, so the mainstream media is dying, they just haven’t realized it yet.  They will soon.  Like a man stumbling off a cliff, things are only going to get worse—until they hit bottom.  Just today came word that the print edition of my hometown newspaper would drop from six to three days a week.  If I want to read the news the other days, I’ll have to subscribe to the online edition. 

          Being in the new media business, I watch the trends and in this task my two sons are helpful.  They are both around thirty-years-old, well educated and tech savvy.  They’ll read my newspaper, but they don’t buy one. Both have large flat-screen televisions connected only to computers and game systems.  They, and their friends, get their news and entertainment online.  I’m convinced that most of the old media executives are floundering as they try to stay afloat. 

          Just hours, after I learned my hometown paper was cutting print runs, I saw the embedded video titled Cops vs. Cameras: The Killing of Kelly Thomas & The Power of New Media.  This is both a story of alleged police brutality and the new media.  Local newspapers and television showed little interest in the killing of Thomas.  The agonized sound of the young man calling for his father as the police beat him, captured by a bystander, kept the story going and led to the indictment of the two officers.

          Today everyone has a camera in their pocket and in seconds they can upload the images to the Internet for all the world to see.  That is exactly what happened with the Kelly Thomas video.  In 1991 when the Rodney King beating was recorded, there were two music stores in my small town and almost no one carried a video camera around with them.  Today there are no music stores in town and almost everyone uses their phone to buy songs, take pictures and video.  Twenty years ago I would have been a bystander if a newsworthy event occurred, today in the new media world, I’d pull out my phone and start recording.