The White House released the 'long form' of President Obama's birth certificate today. While it will be interesting to see where the birthers move the goalposts now that their up-to-now one and only demand has been met, the reporting of this is a great example of why traditional media is struggling so much.
The AP and CNN both reported the release with short blurbs that said little more than "White House releases Obama's long-form birth certificate." Mediaite, on the other hand, put up a story that included the actual White House blog post and, most importantly, the image of the fricking birth certificate itself.
Because even though I know that Obama was born in Hawaii, I still want to see the stupid thing because that's how we humans work. If you are a regular at Fark as I am, you know that one of the established frustrations is how there will be a story reported online by a local newspaper or even television station about a 90-foot-tall rooster shooting lasers out of its eyes and stomping all the cars downtown, but there won't be a picture included with the story.
Every news media website has comments and ways to submit stories, as well as buttons to spread the story via Facebook, Digg, Reddit and whatever else is showing up today. But the majority of them still haven't figured out that what we want is a damn picture and perhaps a link or two so we can substantiate the reporting for ourselves. Until they figure that out, the traditional media is going to keep losing readers to blogs and places like Mediaite.
Low-tech cyclist recently commented that he can't wait until TPM is a full-service news organization. I agree, because they, of course, get it completely. Newspapers and TV stations would do well to look at what Josh Marshall is doing and try to emulate it.
