“The Death and Rebirth of Journalism” was the topic of the second day’s opening keynote at BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2009. During the session -moderated by Brain Solis, with the participation of Don Lemon from CNN, Joanna Drake Earl from Current.com, Jay Rosen journalism professor for NYU, and Hugh Hewitt, expert in politics and radio show host-, Lemon pulls the Kanye West with a Swift interruption on Joanna Drake and Current TV, raising his hand while interrupting her without waiting to be acknowledged. She was talking about how citizen journalism is spreading around the world and she mentioned the story Current was doing about Oxycontin Express, when Don Lemon jumped in with his Oxycontin report. Watch the video below from 20:30 mark to 22:00 and let me know what you think.
Another highlight of the session was Don Lemon trying to acknowledge the value of the Mainstream Media when it comes to fact checking. He first tried to suggest that only major publications have the commitment with journalism techniques. “If you see it on Twitter, you would say: What’s up with that balloon boy. But then comes the mainstream media, and bring the facts behind the story!”
A few days later the Balloon Boy story that CNN covered and Don Lemon said was fact checked turn out to be a fraud that fooled the whole media. What happened to all that fact checking? Maybe if they followed more people back on Twitter they can gain more leads on news stories that they can fact check if they would like to. But this is just my opinion, not to be confused with fact.
As Jay Rosen pointed out to Don Lemon that the gap between the eye witnesses and the mainstream media has always existed. The difference now the facts come online and offline collected by mainstream news to write their stories base on the fact of the eye witnesses, who are on the scene at the time.
Besides trying to steal the thunder from his colleague and and keeping his head down, probably twitting and texting during his own public keynote, Don Lemon did not really deal well with my (and other) question(s) during the Q&A.
As far as I can see on the video, my question was okay, and I had a nice tone of voice. However, Don started saying “Remember when I said that you can be nice when you ask a question”. One more time I ask you to watch the video from 44:52 and give me your impressions and opinions.
The video above is from the opening keynote at BlogWorld Expo 2009 The death and Rebirth of Journalism
Bloggers School respects traditional media and meant no harm, but in my opinion I thought Don was disengaged from the conversation looking down most of the time, tweeting and ignoring the panel unless CNN was mentioned. Also thought that Lemon was out of line on his outlook on new media not fact checking.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
John,
I left a comment with a different e-mail. You should use this one (which is personal) for contacting me. The other is for corporate connectivity.
Great talking with you earlier this evening. Looking forward to the connections.
Monnie
Great story. I recommend every person t watch “Oxycontin Express” on Current TV. If you search “Oxycontin Express” on current.com, you can easily find it. This is a very eye opening story about a serious problem. I could not believe what I saw. Mainstream media needs to get over the fact that they do not control what we do and do not see.