NP: Special1TV

For all the talk of how Twitter is the place to be for coverage of the election turmoil in Iran, and how the histrionics about how the mainstream media is totally, unequivocally dead, I'm with Kevin Drum on this one. Twitter's volume and lack of filters can be problematic. I think there were 16,000 posts with #iranelection over the space of a couple of hours this morning, and I defy anyone to be able to separate the signal from the noise when absolutely anyone can say anything they want, with whatever biases and inaccuracies go along with first-person reporting from ordinary citizens.

There is definitely an evolution going on, and the difference is going to be which media outlets are best positioned to, well, evolve. The New York Times, the BBC and al Jazeera have been cited many times over the weekend as sources of reliable information, particularly on their own blogs and aggregation of raw data, and the trick now is to pivot on that to help move the fittest mainstream sources into the post-print era.

We need filters, in the sense that we can't be asked to interpret raw data in real time. It's too much for individuals who aren't plugged into the matrix the way Andrew Sullivan is. There is a role for the mainstream media, but they need to figure out exactly how that role works best.