July 21st, 2004
CNN and Technorati: Unconventional wisdom
Political conventions have devolved since Kennedy commandeered television. As suspense went out the window thanks to front-loaded primaries and brokered tickets, the Big Show became an infomercial.
The same thing has happened in the technology space, with Comdex giving way to vendor-controlled developer conferences such as Microsoft PDC and JavaOne. And television has undergone its own broadcast-ectomy, as “reality” shows dominate the networks and viewers flee to cable, satellite, and the Web.
On the surface, this year’s Democratic National Convention in Boston fits this pattern. The Kerry-Edwards team is in place, Hillary is back in prime time after a last-minute un-cancellation, and the networks have neatly wrapped each day up in nice 2-hour packages. Look, there’s Howard Dean in the Parade of Vanquished Primary Candidates.
Yes, whatever happened to that well-oiled Internet fund-raising machine Dean and Joe Trippi invented? Well, Kerry treated it like an open source project and reused the code to pull in more money than heavyweight champ Bush. And you can find Trippi on MSNBC getting conned by Chris Matthews on Hardball into making the loud, confident, and wrong prediction that Chaney would be dropped from the ticket.
Makes me long for the days when the whole world was watching, when Dan Rather got dragged out of the Chicago convention for daring to believe his lying eyes. But this is likely Rather’s last convention, Brokaw has already announced his retirement, and This Week is still without David Brinkley. If Brinkley were alive, he’d probably tell Trippi that it’s more likely that Chaney would dump Bush than the other way around.
It’s that kind of conventional wisdom that’s fled to the blogosphere. Just as Jonathan Schwartz, Sun president and COO, has cut out the middle people with his own blog, so too has FCC chairman Michael Powell. The DNC has accredited 30-some bloggers with floor access in Boston. And now CNN has joined forces 
with Technorati to bring TV and the Web together in a new way. Technorati CEO David Sifry will provide on-camera analysis of the blog conversation, and CNN’s website will integrate real-time Technorati data with its convention coverage.
[Disclosure: I am a member of Technorati’s Advisory Board, and am working with Sifry—and his competitors--on the RSS attention.xml standard. When I first heard about CNN’s plans, I shrewdly advised Sifry that this was “really cool.”]
Just as CNN continues to provide the gavel–to-gavel coverage the networks used to do, its alliance with Technorati validates the voice and authority of the blogosphere. In effect, CNN becomes the first bridge between the broadcast age and the peer-to-peer age of the real-time network. As VoIP collapses voice and data into message types, citizens are looking for new maps into the event streams that are coming increasingly via broadband.
No doubt there will be continued tension between traditional media and self-publishers. But the name of this game is participatory democracy, and both CNN and Technorati have shown unconventional wisdom in taking an important step forward in restoring balance to the system.
Note: David Sifry will join The Gillmor Gang for a special live edition, Thursday, July 22, at 1PM Pacific/4PM Eastern.
