Traditional media outlets are faster (but dumber) than bloggers

A very long time ago, a certain Denver newspaper megacorp decided to launch a little thing called Politics West. The effort centered around the Gang of Four blog, wherein a bunch of professional pundits got yet another platform for their personalities. At the time I was doing a lot of political blogging. And someplace I can no longer locate, I wrote this little rant about the idiocy of the SCLM. It went something like this:

Bloggers are more passionate, more involved and more willing to engage in long conversations than journalists are. The only competitive advantages they have over us are speed and access. In what business model can you make money by ignoring your advantages and instead copying a bunch of activists who are willing to work their butts off for free? The media provide us with fast, accurate information. That's their job. Why won't they do their job?

Which is a roundabout way of linking to a post from Trendsspotting:

Cornell Researchers report that most news flowed from the traditional media to the blogs: The traditional news was found to lead blogs discussions by 2.5 hours on average.

No kidding. The media reports the news. The people converse and decipher meaning. That is the way things ought to work. I think newspapers are failing because they tried to subvert this order, asking citizen journalists to find news items for pundits to discuss.

Gareth Kay will be in Denver tomorrow and at Goodby shortly thereafter

This Thursday Gareth Kay, best known as head of planning at Modernista!, comes to Denver as a featured speaker in the New Denver Ad Club's Outside Voices series. In very related news, today Gareth announced on Twitter that he is moving to San Francisco to become director of digital strategy at Goodby Silverstein.

The first spot for Next: A Portfolio Program from the New Denver Ad Club

I am constantly amazed by the generosity, talent and work ethic of the people I meet

The NDAC is launching a portfolio program. Next. It's targeted at young guns. Copywriters and art directors who want to improve their book and their network. Jennifer Hohn and I volunteered to brand the program. We went through concepts. Laughed a lot. Wrote some scripts. When Brian asked me if I could guarantee that I could get the stuff produced, I said yes. But I was totally lying. I mean, who was going to make our ideas come to life?

I should have had more faith.

Soon Jim Elkin of Roshambo Films was producing and directing our videos for the club's YouTube page. (The first will be posted Monday.) Radical was getting us three great actors and Idolum was donating editing time. (And incidentally, Tom also offered to help out.)

David Mejias was shooting the poster campaign, with XYZ doing the retouching and Tewell Warren printing.

Justin McCammon and Taylor Beseda got all digital on the idea, with elements like the @nextcreatives smackdowns, nextcreatives.com, and a collaboration with Burns on a soon-to-be-released Facebook app.

And Gregg Bergan, Norm Shearer, Mike Sukle and Jonathan Schoenberg offered to donate their time to mold the next generation of Denver creatives.

Every single person I just mentioned has a crazy-stressful job and a loving family and who knows what else might be going on in their lives. But every single one of them believes that Next will help the career of a young creative who is just burning to be great. Every single one of them wants to make Denver a better market. Every single one of them deserves a giant round of applause. This is a good business we're in. And it's filled with good people. Believe it.