Michael Jackson's Death Illustrates How Much Media Has Changed

If you were to look at the tea leaves that led to me pursuing a career in which media played a prominent role, you could see indications in my enduring fascination with how media covers big stories, and how, big events, and yes, I speak here of the death of Michael Jackson, almost always illuminate media trends that have actually existed for some time.  Here then, five things I noticed in the first few hours of the around-the-clock coverage of the death of Michael Jackson, who in terms of celebrity deaths and the media is like the death of Elvis, gone totally multi-platform:

1. That, unfortunately, the notion of confirming a story is becoming quaint. As I drove my daughter to the pool yesterday, radio dial turned to WCBS NewsRadio 880, the station was waiting around for confirmation of what TMZ had some time earlier reported — that Michael Jackson was indeed, dead. Found myself thinking two things; that since the report was on TMZ it was definitely true, based on the site’s past track record, not its strong adherence to journalistic standards … and how pitiful it was to witness old-time media operating with one hand tied behind its back, waiting for the official spokespeople to say something, beholden to the PR-people-that-be.

2. That almost everyone wanted in on the story in the name of traffic (I suppose you could include this blog in that … go ahead). The Wall Street Journal Online ran the story huge last night (at right), even though its big story of the day clearly should have been Ben Bernanke testifying on Capitol Hill about his role in the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch deal. Look at the weak attempt at a business angle: “Savvy Deals Aided Lavish Lifestyle.” Sheesh.

3. That if real-time search has a business model it’s in these huge, spiking news stories, particularly news stories with a heavy commercial angle. While there’s no real commerce to be had in the Iran protests, nor should there be, the sudden interest in a dead celebrity’s entertainment output should mean dollar signs for media. But a big story like this also exposes the problem of making money off of real-time: the prime media placements were bought up awhile ago and the operations aren’t in place for the companies involved to turn on a dime and make this happen. YouTube, for example, has put the full slate of MJ video content front and center on its site — a perfect opportunity, if a bit morbid, to package advertising that easily links consumers to ways to purchase that content. As of right now, there are links to buy the songs, but not the videos. Instead, unless it can directly monetize this surge of interest in MJ soon, the main way this will be expressed in YouTube’s bottom line is in huge costs to stream the content. Meanwhile, Amazon and iTunes are the ones making the real money.

4. That user-generated content shows the problems with the TMZ age writ-large, when anyone can publish anything, if they feel like it — and distribute it to millions. Surely, the weirdest meme online last night was the hoax that Jeff Goldblum and/or Harrison Ford had joined MJ and Farrah Fawcett on the, um, golden escalator. (For those who believe that big deaths happen in threes, I guess for some people Ed McMahon’s passing early this week didn’t get the job done.)

5. That maybe MTV should consider occasionally playing music videos again. MTV is suddenly a trending topic on Twitter because it’s doing a huge MJ retrospective. While there’s plenty of chatter about just how good some of his videos were, it is also fascinating to see just how much of the commentary is about how refreshing it is to see MTV playing videos again. Just like old times.

As a side note, I was impressed, as was All Things D’s Peter Kafka, about the Internet’s ability to handle a huge day in Internet traffic. While there were some reports of slow connection speeds, I experienced none of that, and as you can tell from the above, when it came to this story, I got around.