Riffing on "Instant Journalism"

I read Andy Abramson's post on Instant Journalism yesterday and was amazed at the amount of traction and comment it generated on a Saturday (traditionally a pretty slow day measured in blog reflex speed). He covers a lot of ground in discussing the implications of mobile bloggers (and evolved writers in other mediums) traveling with high-resolution cameras, high-speed connectivity, and a passion for getting to the news and sharing it instantly.

With all that is going on this year at CES, an event I'm going to for the next few days, it's going to be the independent news sources, not the main stream media where a lot of the so called "breaking news" and more interesting stories are told. With blogging, podcasting and video blogging happening from anywhere there's an IP connection, we have entered an era of "Instant Journalism" and of "just in time" distribution of news content. The way news is gathered, who it is gathered by, where and how it is disseminated is changing. What people want to know about, and where they go to find it, is changing too.

I've been seeing this trend develop (and have made my own small contributions to it) for the past few years. When Jason Calacanis and I live blogged the DEMO Conference in Scottsdale two years ago with a high-res still camera, high-def video camera, and a team of four very caffeinated people, what we were doing was unusual and generated a lot of comments and appreciative nods from other writers and the conference organizers. Today, it's pretty much accepted practice by the event organizers and leading new media to cover events as they happen with running blog commentary, streams of photos, podcasts, and video.

The world has changed and the way news happens has too. Some people are defining the front edge of the trend like Scoble and the work he's now doing at PodTech. They are, in fact, redefining the notion of the salon with their BlogHaus at the Bellagio. Peter and Ryan and their crew of never-sleep, never accept "no" bloggers at Engadget continue the Weblogs, Inc. tradition of getting to the stories and getting them posted in a nearly continuous stream whether the event is CES or MacWorld.

ZDNet and C|Net will be all over both events of course. David Berlind, Ed Bott, Matthew Miller, Mary Jo Foley, and I will be at the event looking into various facets of the event. Dan Farber, Jason O'Grady, and others) will be at MacWorld.

With so much coverage coming from so many people, the noise level is going to be high.

I'll be at CES through Wednesday night and am looking forward to seeing what interesting new ideas I can find. Armed with my brand new Nokia N93 (an amazing device I will be writing about at greater length after this trip), I'll be snapping photos, trying my hand at a bit of video, and exploring a much more mobile form of event blogging than what I've tended to do in the past. I've got my comfy shoes and stripped-down gadget bag ready. More from the event to follow. If you can't make it to Vegas, trust me... you'll have a front row seat thanks to Instant Journalism.