If you managed to power through your Turkey Coma and found yourself up tweeting into the night on Sunday, you undoubtedly encountered rave reviews and quotes from David Carr's "The Fall and Rise of Media" piece in the New York Times.
The Columnist Himself was notably perplexed by the viral reaction to his fairly obvious analysis, tweeting on Tuesday:
"Goodbye to Some of All That: http://bit.ly/5UueKg Media Equation got huge reax the minute it went up. Not sure why, but I'll take it."
I've been reading swan songs to the so-called "MSM" for a solid decade now, so I was shocked and deeply satisfied when the elegant prose Carr delivered beguiled its snore of a headline.
After some debate via twitter, email and *gasp* IRL, it seems that the reason for the commentary's resonance was two-fold.
1)It's still so very true that nothing exists until the New York Times declares it. (And Bill Keller acknowledging the paper's "old news" on Jon Stewart didn't count because it was infotainment.)
2)New York has finally conceded what has been obvious to regional media for some time: That its glorious and impervious reign of self-importance has been ripped to shreds like a discarded batch of newsroom pink slips.
Almost all the tweets I saw following Carr's post were from die-hard New York media types, many of them friends whose influence and savvy are entrenchments in the national media scene. I lived in New York for most of this last year, and the reactions were like the 140-character manifestation of the sad looks I witnessed on their faces over cocktails as they made blasé references to book parties and town cars past.
It wasn't just Wall Street that fell hard in 2009, the publishing industry was left emaciated with far fewer magazine covers on which to strut its bare bones. By the summer, everyone with a Tweetie iPhone app was following Jack Dorsey around the panel circuit and re-evaluating whether Nick Denton wasn't more brilliant than bombastic. The outpouring of social media experts riding Carr's "fresh, ferocious wave" of innovation were in full effect at Mashable mixers and Rachel Sklar documented every second of it on her Flickr feed. It wasn't until we shipped Laurel Touby and Jon Fine off on a tour around the world that we paused to realize that the unraveling was truly upon us.
Having come to this auspicious scene via Los Angeles and Chicago, and now looking on from my new home in Washington DC, I feel an empathy for what New York has lost. It was a beacon of influence, albeit an island mentality that never quite jived with those of us looking on from, you know, other places.
I realized by 2005 that the Chicago Tribune column I'd won at age 23 was not going to prepare me for the road ahead, so I took the one less traveled to The Huffington Post before it was the blogosphere's omniscient megaphone. Of course, regional digital trailblazers like Eric Zorn have led to the Tribune's prolific ChicagoNow.com and other worthy enterprises that far exceed the expectations of a behemoth traditional news factory. Who's to say which route is a better one? Regardless, the single-channel lecture format that historically reinforced our journalistic egos was clearly not in the interest of the general public or the free market of information.
What replaces New York then?
A former intern for The Nation and lovely young journo @susannahvila asked me that and I replied: "It's wherever the innovative people are... I'd argue San Francisco is more relevant these days."
Perhaps it is New York-centric to be a disciple of Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky, but I have to throw my hands up to the clouds on this one.
In some ways this is an exciting egalitarian victory for the kids in Kansas who could achieve with a posterous blog from a Wal Mart parking lot what Tina Brown and Graydon Carter built on glossy pages in the hallowed halls of heroic skyscapers. (Oh dear, some standard of glamorousness must apply?)
Still, I suspect the inescapable spirit of industriousness Carr attributes to the emerging generation of journalists applies to Manhattan itself. Like all great empires confronting demise, the survivors tell the stories.