Robert Redford and a New Media Story

This is a story of old versus new, of ink-on-paper versus pixels on a screen. It is a story of advocacy writing and social networks. Fundamentally it is a story of the future and it is not a happy story for the survival of print newspapers.

A few weeks ago, NRDC Trustee Robert Redford called and asked for our help in drafting an opinion editorial against midnight land leases by the Bush Administration to oil and drilling companies. The lands in question abut some of our most cherished national monuments and parks. The leases are being rushed by the lameduck administration as yet another give-away to big oil and its allies.

My colleagues worked with Bob and quickly produced a strong narrative. Then came the painful process of seeking placement. All the major newspapers were interested enough to take a look but each ultimately said they didn't have enough space to run the article.

We then ended up where we should have been at the start: the Huffington Post, the vast cacophony of voices from the well known and unknown, all offering opinion and reporting on the news of the moment.

Within what seemed to be seconds after receiving our inquiry, Bob's opinion piece was on the homepage of the Huffington Post and beginning to attract what would end up being hundreds of comments, including many questions about what readers could do to help stop the land sales and leases. (Bob's piece is also posted on NRDC's new citizen journalism blog called Greenlight. Check it out and see how to add your voice!)

Most interesting, however, were the requests for Bob to appear on news programs to discuss his concerns. He soon appeared on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show (see below to view) and I saw that he did another round of television interviews the next day.

Its impossible to know with any certainty whether Bob's op-ed would have attracted the same media attention had it run in any of the major newspapers. But I don't believe it would have and here's why: it has become pretty clear through this experience and others that the Huffington Post is where the producers and others who determine television coverage go to get their news.

That's a function that used to be primarily filled by The New York Times (and no one would argue that it isn't still an influential voice) but one that is being eclipsed in some very important ways by Huffpo.

Days after our experience with the Redford oped, Huffington Post announced that it had received an additional $25 million in new venture funding. Fred Harman, the lead source for those additional millions, told an interviewer:

There is an inevitable shift from offline to online with people increasingly getting their news media online, and this election proved how powerful the Huffington Post could be.  And I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site.

As a former New York Times reporter, watching the slow-but-inevitable decline of mass audience print media hurts. But as a professional communicator, I'm more than a little intellectually intrigued by the possibilities presented by new media.