It’s all over the media and it could possibly spell the end of Romney’s run for the Presidency.
A home-made video, shot on a phone.
When we look back on this moment 10 years from now or so, I think this will be the moment when the world changed.
The painful irony here is the juxtaposition of the network-produced TV spectaculars that were the Republican and Democratic conventions only a week ago.
Those made-for-TV events, so carefully scripted, shot and produced were the pinnacle of conventional televison achievement, and also its death knell.
For all the millions and millions of dollars spent on those convention specials, what did they deliver? Â A predicatable, scripted, controlled and contrived ‘show’. Not all that interesting (save perhaps for the not so scripted Clint Eastwood ‘moment’, which believe me, won’t be allowed to happen again). Â The ‘shows’ were about as interesting as the People’s Choice Awards.
According to the Washington Post, the cost of covering just the GOP convention was $100 million!
And for what?
A predictable pile of pap.
Jeff Jarvis has a great blog about what a waste of time sending 15,000 reporters to Tampa was.
The flip side of the coin, of course, is that one video, made with one iPhone (one can only hope, based on the book), has now upended an entire billion dollar campaign. And the cost of making that video? Â $0
This is the new medium.
This is the new source of video journalism.
Not guys in suits and jackets staring into cameras reading teleprompters, but real, here and now, as it happens truth.
And for no production cost.
Ironic, no?
Even more ironic that the same week that Romney’s campaign is overturned by an iPhone video, the Islamic World is set aflame by a YouTube video.
For better or for worse, (and I think it is for better), the Networks days are drawing to a close.
