You had to watch closely, but the inevitable convergence of traditional print and broadcast media with digital new media was particularly evident this past week.  First, the old guard broadcasters continued to turn to the web’s new maven for polling analysis. Nate Silver, a baseball statistics super fan-turned FiveThirtyEight.com political pollster, astounded everyone by calling the presidential election results down to a tenth of a percent.  So with three U.S. Senate races still uncalled – Alaska, Georgia, and Minnesota – traditional media readily turned to Silver at week’s close for his thinking on the Democrats’ chances for a Senate super majority.

FiveThirtyEight.com has become overnight the choice for hard facts election and polling analysis, a reputation that until recently belonged exclusively to broadcast and print outlets.

Also at week’s close, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman readily cited and quoted at length an AutoChannel.com article to support his argument against an unrestricted taxpayer-funded bailout of the U.S. auto industry.  Perhaps even less than a year ago, it was pretty much unheard of for mainstream media to site a source that wasn’t also “MSM.”  And “The Gray Lady” national newspaper of record, yet; how far new media has come as we near eventful 2008’s close.

Bill Bartman is an independent correspondent, investigative reporter, and consultant for print, broadcast, and digital new media.  He also consults telecommunications and information technology ventures.

Article Tags: Nate Silver | Thomas L. Friedman

Filed under: Digital Media, Election, TV