Unified Live

Tonight the mainstream media narrative was shattered like a glass ceiling crashing to the ground. The alleged rift, if there ever was such a rift among democratic voters - more like a chasm if you listen to the echoes coming out of the cable-based, media punditry - has been bridged in a remarkable, Tapanzeeing fashion. And the first few riders across that chasm, reporting live, while Hillary delivered her historic unification, were the bloggers - the "live" bloggers.

If 2000 and 2002 were the "Internet" elections, and 2004 was the "blog" election, and 2006 the "video blog" election, then 2008 might very well be construed the "live blog" election.

Think about it, the Internet was weaned from the mother's milk of NSF funding in 1995, but it really wasn't until the 2000 presidential election that we, the consumer/voter, bore witness to Internet affecting campaigns (I remember receiving an email from Ralph Nader). By 2002, it was critical that those running in the interim elections had a website that provided information. By 2004, bloggers, who were already alive and well and posting several years prior, hit the Boston Democratic Convention scene with a few assorted press credentials, some mainstream media attention, and a plethora of commentary. By the 2006 interim elections, the gates had been crashed, and the technology was widespread and available for the so called "YouTube" era of political coverage to begin. (Can anyone forget how Senator Jim Webb secured his seat when his incumbent opponent - George Allen - made his ill-fated racial slur?)

Now we are here, in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign and programs like CoverItLive and Twitter have enabled citizen journalists, as well as the people who follow those journalist's to link up and share information as it happens.

While Hillary Clinton delivered that speech in front of a frenzied, Democratic National Convention crowd, bloggers like BarbinMD on the DailyKos and Matthew Baldwin from Defective Yeti, were disseminating the Junior Senator's words as she spoke them, providing play by play commentary. What is truly funny, in a post-modern sort of way, is that Barbin was seemingly at the convention (given the pictures posted from earlier in the day) all the while Baldwin was likely watching from somewhere on the West Coast, (as is illustrated by his PT time signatures and his bio that states he lives in Seattle).

With live blogging, we the consumer of media are given yet another outlet to procure real time information. Watching this evolution of media-technology in action, before our eyes, is fantastic. Admittedly however, reading real-time commentary does not provide as much of a visual punch that we the modern, multi-faceted, consumer requires. For now, the mainstream media, with all their fancy camera angles and their High Definition capabilities, still has an advantage.

Alas, that advantage exists for only a short time more. As the always cutting-edge, "godfather" of the medium, Steve Garfield illustrates the same technology that drives live blogging, is pushing forward live-action video blogging, (or live "vlogging" as some of the wonks might articulate).

Take for example the short amount of time it took for bloggers to go from simple posting to video posting, then consider the current status of live video capabilities. Add in tonight's presidential sounding speech and Obama's staggering poll numbers (if you buy into the polls), and it is not so far-fetched to envision hordes of independent journalists, cell phones raised, streaming live video blog-casts, from the back rows of Madison Square Garden, while Hillary Clinton, already 20 points ahead, is giving her Democratic nomination acceptance speech. It's the HRC fan's dream!

Ok, well, lets not get too ahead of ourselves. The reality is, after Hillary Clinton's speech last night, the Democratic Party is united, this media narrative that perpetuates this phony chasm is hopefully put to bed, and the only accurate prognostication here comes in the form of the real-time video blogs that will be abundant in 2012, wherever Barack Obama's convention might be...