“Living in The Age of New Media”   By Neeti Dewan. We all know that Time Magazine recently chose as its Person of the Year: “You.”

This unconventional choice was meant to acknowledge the fact that new technology has given everyday citizens like you, me, and the teenager next door the power to gather information and report what they find on their own blogs.      Did you know?   There are already 50 million blogs in existence, and a hundred thousand more are added every day.     Over a quarter million new entries are added to Amazon.com every day.  Wikipedia, an online citizen-encyclopedia, has six million entries.  And as of this writing, over one hundred million videos are viewed everyday on U-Tube.   With so much information available to the general public from various sources, where do journalists fit in?    Are they in direct competition with the citizen videographer and reporter?    And what are the implications for the business community?   Recently, Nicole Lapin, CNN Pipeline news anchor met with members of the Los Angeles Press Club on Hollywood Blvd to discuss these and other questions about “New Media.”   As you can imagine, there was lively debate.  On the positive side:   With the proliferation of “New Media,” we all have many more news options.    We have access to news that we find important, based on where we live, and what our interests are.    We have the choice to determine what we want to see and hear as well as when and how.  Yet, it appears that traditional journalists will continue to have a place alongside and within new media.    While anyone can shoot video or take photographs, he or she may not have the training and educational background to put raw news in context or provide history on a topic.      One positive example of citizen journalism at work is the January 2007 “snow fall” in usually sunny Malibu.    The first text messages and pictures of the snow came from school children.  Then, the Malibu snow story was picked up by traditional media and went around the world.   There is some tension between new media and traditional media, but Lapin said that CNN has decided to embrace the model of the citizen journalist.    “The reality is that we should be open to all sources of news,” Lapin said.  “It is not responsible to not give journalists a challenge and look at all sources for news!”   Since CNN cannot be every where in the world when news happens, CNN Pipeline accepts citizen journalist submissions.  These are authentic and thought provoking videos.     “The mentality is changing.  Bloggers and citizen journalists are becoming mainstream.  Who captured the first videos of the London subway bombings and reported it?  It was the average citizen, and that is powerful.”    CNN Pipeline has fully embraced the new cultural shift and allows you to see the raw footage.  The traffic on cnn.com continues to increase.  CNN Pipeline’s audience demographic is “the informed citizen who is affluent and enjoys keeping up with news.”    So, what are the implications for you and me?    Well, first of all, each of us can become reporters, using our cell phone cameras, audio recorders, and Blackberries to transmit our stories and pictures worldwide within minutes.   We can also become the subject of stories.  Whenever you and I are in public, we should assume that anything we say or do could end up on U-Tube and be on the Internet forever.                                                         ******   Neeti Dewan is the author of “From Executive to Yogi in Sixty Seconds: A Revolutionary Approach To Increasing Productivity, Profitability, and Personal Efficiency,” a book that helps people create balance between their work and personal life, while continuing to focus on excellence at work.  Order the book from www.amazon.com and find out more about Neeti Dewan at www.theexecutiveyogi.com.