ARTS & FARCES internet

Just as I was starting college 30 years ago, Tom Wolfe declared the novel dead, to be replaced by creative nonfiction and the narrative voice in the form of literary journalism. The participant observer had arrived in journalism, according to a single, groundbreaking article in New York magazine, “The Birth of ‘The New Journalism;’ Eyewitness Report by Tom Wolfe.” The earth shook just a little as the printing presses rumbled and belched, causing simultaneous indigestion in just about every corporate boardroom in America.

Writers were out from under the oppressive thumb of corporate control. Or so we thought. Suddenly it was okay—encouraged, even—to write with a distinctive, authentic voice.

In 1995, Joshua Quitner was the first of many to write that the New Journalism—still an occupation for highly trained professionals, don’t try this at home, kids—was hereby displaced by Way New Journalism. Anyone with the price of a web server and Internet connection could compete with traditional, mainstream, corporate media. Or so we thought.

Something happened last month—at of all places, a technology conference—that portends a change in journalism so drastic it’s impossible to even begin to imagine the scope of its impact. Call it journalism the next, or whatever you like—Dan Gillmor, one of the participants in the event, calls it ” Journalism 3.0”—but it’s here and it’s not going away.

Briefly, here’s what happened during a PC Forum session last month in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Joe Nacchio, CEO of Qwest Telecommunications Inc., was lamenting how difficult it was to be in the American telecommunications business just now. Apparently Nacchio really had the string section playing in full regalia. Unfortunately for Joe, two really good webloggers—Doc Searls and Dan Gillmor—were in the audience. Searls and Gillmor were both providing near-realtime coverage of the session on their respective websites.

A mutual friend of both, Buzz Bruggeman, saw the comments and sent both journalists a heads-up link to Nacchio’s Qwest stock transactions. It became immediately apparent to both Searls and Gillmor that Nacchio had fared exceptionally well in the American telecommunications industry, thank you very much, and that his comments with regard to the need for a “capital friendly system” in order for broadband to flourish were duplicitous. Both journalists made the point quickly and quite clearly in their online publications.

Accounts indicate that fully one-half of the PC Forum attendees were monitoring email and weblogs—including the Searls and Gillmor websites—via wireless network connectivity during the conference. Word of Nacchio’s duplicitousness spread like wildfire throughout the conference room and the audience turned understandably hostile. Esther Dyson, organizer of the conference wrote that she “can’t say how much was due to the blogging and how much a straight reaction to Nacchio onstage.”

Dyson sees the impact of high-speed, ubiquitous Internet connectivity at conferences and trade shows as a logical progression from phone banks, and press rooms. All conferences will now become annotated events and a simultaneous second virtual conference will take place “around, through, and across” the conference taking place in physical space.

But more importantly, what will the impact of ubiquitous networking during real-time events be on journalism. It’s clearly too soon to tell, but a few things are coming into crystal-clear focus. The days of fat-cat carpetbaggers like Nacchio being able to hoodwink a roomful of people with self-serving bullshit are over. That much is certain. Disingenousness and duplicitousness on the part of both journalists and the newsmakers they cover are history as well. Self-anointed pundits and the Sunday morning gasbags had better get their facts straight from now on. Agendas are suddenly and totally transparent, if we have the wherewithal to pursue the facts. Suddenly we are all potential participant observers.

This is going to get good.