Chapter 9: That Internet Chapter

Overview

New media. You hear it all the time, everywhere you go. But what the heck is it? New media is nothing more than shorthand for the Internet. The Internet has become the powerhouse of the media industry, because when it comes to news, the Web offers so many more options and capabilities than the traditional print and broadcast media.

Traditional papers go to print in the wee hours. Big machines churn out millions of sheets of printed paper, assemble them, pack them up and do it all again the next night. It’s a once-a-day process, and it doesn’t happen any more often than that. The story’s so much more exciting for the Web. It never goes to print, it’s never definite, and it never closes. Or as news guys say: never frozen.

You can harness those torrents of energy and use them to generate electrifying buzz. For the past ten years we’ve surfed from New York to Tahiti, found some of the most useful tricks on the Web, and figured out how to convert fiber, switches, and keyboards into a turbo-charged publicity tool. This isn’t a do-it-yourself guide to building a website—there are already plenty of books out there on that subject. Instead, we want this to serve as a useful, capricious, and fun primer on generating “da buzz” online and to give you the inside scoop on the current environment for media relations on the Web.

And now, on to the rules of the Web game.