What the Media Industry Lives (and Dies) For: Election Night

It would be pointless to discuss business strategy in this space today. For media companies large and small, today and tomorrow are about only one topic: The U.S. Presidential Election 2008.

Traffic to websites has been huge in the days and weeks leading up to this moment. The candidates themselves are frantically flying coast to coast trying to pick up that last undecided voter’s attention.

The networks are readying their multi-million-dollar “magic screens,” and other technological gadgets to bring you up-to-date news. Clearly, people all over the world will be watching the results closely.

Our impressions of the world are so thoroughly mediated in this time that it can be hard to remember that this sort media frenzy is a modern phenomenon. When the dust settles, and this election is over, it will be worth considering how digital technology has tranformed the way media operate in way large and small.

One enduring image, probably never again to be repeated, is the almost comical sight of banks of CNN reporters, all staring at their laptop computers, as if they were blogging. In their frenetic attempt to seem on top of the moment, CNN has unintentionally created a parody of itself that ought to give Jon Stewart, SNL, and any other comic paying attention tons of material for the months to come.

“The best political team on television!”

“Let’s find out what the bloggers are saying!”

“Join us in the conversation online now!”

Yikes. Four years from now, most people won’t even be accessing the Internet via laptops, but via PDAs. But that’s okay. In the 1972 election cycle, TV newsmen wore sideburns and bell-bottom pants. By four years later, styles had shifted, but who ever looks back in America?

Certainly not the ever-so-trendy “news” media.

It is odd, however, that at a time like this, that a much more elemental — and more universal — event has suddenly intervened to stop the chatter, if only for a little while. It’s the news about the simple, unconditional love of a grandmother for her grandson.  It’s the news of Barack Obama’s personal loss on the eve of what would have been his Grandmother’s proudest day.

You cannot script that. And one would hope that the chattering classes would try to remain silent about it. Not everything in life is political, and not everything about a life is worth politicizing.

Love and loss, grief and recovery fuel the real stories of real people every day.  Of course, this has to be a bittersweet moment for Barack Obama and his family. This is the kind of human loss that is far more painful than losing an election ever could be.

A man can always run for office again. But he can’t bring back the people he loves once they pass on. And that’s something every media person should remember when covering this particular election tomorrow night. Right, Left, Centrist, Republican, Democrat, Independent — we all share a certain tragic fate.

It’s less about “winning” an election than it is about how to bring people together so that we might mitigate the pain of our common fate. We are, in the end, all in this together.