How To Split An Atom

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Tech journalists are constantly asking when we will hit the mainstream. They wonder how long it will be before the culture of blogosphere spills over into the real world. Many subscribe to the Utopian belief that the day when blogging supersedes mainstream media is upon us.

They believe that the world is finally ready for the rise of the citizen journalist. Before the delusions of New Media revolution cause your common sense to falter, I wanted to present you with a comparison.

Below are some of the top “real” news stories of the day, followed by some of the bigger stories of today as brought to us by Techmeme. Lets take a closer look.

The “Real” News

Clinton Defeats Obama In Primary

Do you know what people like more than watching Republicans and Democrats squabble with each other over the fate of the free world? Watching the preamble. It’s in our collective blood to enjoy the culling of the herd before the blood shed.

Kenya Crisis Worsens As Opposition Cools To Talk

Everyone loves a good foreign crisis. Even if only about 10% of us understand the background of the situation, the title just screams of social consciousness. What type of world citizen would you be if you didn’t read?

White House Told To Answer Email Queries

The government is hiding things from us! What terrible, terrible secrets could be hiding behind Subj: LOL Rummy. The only way to find out is to tune into CNN/Fox New’s rambling, glossing over of Internet security issues followed by 30 minutes of conjecture on the content of emails that likely tell us nothing we aren’t already intuitively aware of.

Northeast Is Toughest Place In U.S. To Sell Homes

“I told Uncle Nathan to get out of New York 5 years ago. I told him, ‘Nate, housing is going to hell. I can just feel it!’ The man has never listened to a word I’ve ever said.” Fear mongering never gets old.

Now, lets look at Techmeme

Bombshell: Google and Facebook Join Dataportability.org

“Huh? What’s dataportability.org? Did they buy Facebook or something? Man, I hope they don’t get rid of Superpoke.” It’s inconceivable to me why anyone but the most tuned in of technology pundits would care. Certainly, for us, this is huge, but I would hardly call it a bombshell in the traditional sense of the word.

AT&T and Other ISPs May Be Getting Ready To Filter

First, a good number of people don’t know what an ISP is. Second, even more people don’t know that AT&T is an ISP. Third, as long as AT&T doesn’t block Youtube, Facebook or ESPN.com, this has as much relevance to the average consumer as, say, the price of Wheat Futures.

Yahoo Releases Browser Based MP3 Player

I don’t imagine that I have to tell you why this isn’t news. In case I do, here is a hint — unless the sentence also contains Kazaa or iPod, MP3 isn’t a real word.

Fast Opens New Front In Microsoft’s War With Google

“War? Oh man! Wait? Microsoft and Google? I’m confused . . . I think I should care, but what does Microsoft have to do with me? I picked up a Mac last week and haven’t had any troubles since.” Country going to war, that’s interesting. Why? Because there is always an implicit threat that the conflict could spill over into our backyard. Company goes to “war,” well that’s just silly.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Is all lost? Not really. Where does Tech Media and the real world converge? At CES, of course. There is a good reason that the undisputed champions of the blogosphere are Gizmodo and Engadget. Everyone likes “cool stuff,” and even people who think AJAX is an astringent love to look at shiny pictures of consumer electronics.

Blogosphere, if we are ever going to be “mainstream” we need to make our news relevant to people who aren’t in the tech community. If traditional journalists have a one up on bloggers it’s in their ability to bring news home to their readers. Before we can call the battle against mainstream media won, there is still a lot of house cleaning left to do.

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