The race to be first on the story led Time Out New York to post on its website that the actress had died, which they soon retracted. Numerous stories followed on other sites, filled with rampant speculation and few facts. Ms. Richardson was fine. Ms. Richardson was in critical condition. Ms. Richardson was being moved to Boston. Ms. Richardson was being moved to New York. Rather than let her fate play out naturally and report the facts as they emerged, the digital ghouls were busy trying to top each other in a sick race to see who could be first to declare her life over.

The Internet opens up new avenues of information and creates new voices. News is no longer limited to a morning newspaper or an evening broadcast. There is an on-demand quality to the medium that can’t be beat.

But the Internet is also a beast that needs to be fed every minute of every day. The care and consideration that goes into doing a story in a “traditional medium” often flies out the window when it comes to posting something online. Many working in the online world treat it like an Etch A Sketch: write something, and if it’s wrong, just shake it and it will fade away. Or just put a line through it, as if somehow that so-called transparency makes the errors and screw-ups acceptable.

Once a story goes online, it starts a feeding frenzy. If one site has something, then the others must follow, and if the news in it can’t be confirmed, just attribute it to “reports” with little regard as to the accuracy of said reports. The attitude is often one of “having something wrong is better than having nothing at all.”

It doesn’t matter that in the grand scheme of things, Ms. Richardson’s accident, while devastating to her family and fans, is not a story of global import. The Internet makes the realities of everyday life seem cataclysmic. It forces us to obsess as it does. It creates a giant echo chamber.

Dignity does not fly in the digital age. Part of this is due to the great void that technology has wrought. Unlimited capacity is not always a good thing, as any quick channel-surfing tour shows. The digital age should have made the world smaller. Instead it made it narrower—all this capacity and capability to show more, and instead we see less. Of course, the end result is that the coverage ultimately overwhelms the event itself. The echo chamber booms so loud and so fast that it becomes meaningless.

The illusion of togetherness and intimacy is another great achievement of twenty-first century technology. The digital age gives the impression of making us all part of a family. Thousands of people can post comments about a tragedy like Ms. Richardson’s accident and feel part of something that they really are not. They post and move on to the next event.

Meanwhile those who are actually hurting are forced to feel and heal their pain at a pace dictated to them by the medium—and the medium will be onto something else in twenty-four hours. They force us to chew, swallow, and excrete without actually digesting. And we all wonder why we're so empty inside.

In response to Stewart’s relentless and piercing attacks, Cramer and CNBC ran to their brothers and sisters for help. Cramer was given shelter by NBC’s Today, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and even Martha Stewart’s talk show, which is distributed by NBC Universal. In those friendly confines—particularly Morning Joe and Martha—Cramer tried to fire back at Stewart. The Daily Show host noted he wasn’t expecting that if he picked on CNBC, “Cramer would get the whole NBC family involved. Don’t mess with the Peacocks!”

Is it really necessary to use NBC and MSNBC as a platform to battle a critic? If NBC feels the need to defend Cramer, it should at least make sure he talks about how he does what he does, acknowledges where he’s been wrong, and points out when he’s been right, rather than just try to disparage Stewart. All that does is confirm the fears that today’s media conglomerates are more interested in protecting the bottom line and promoting their assets than in serving the public.

From a crisis communications standpoint, the end result of NBC’s all-out defense was that it kept the story alive and gave Stewart even more material to go after Cramer. And since Stewart’s show—and the clips of his show on Comedy Central’s website—get more viewers than CNBC, this one is a TKO. Right now, it’s going to be tough to make CNBC look sympathetic against Stewart.

***

On a separate note, buried in one of The Daily Show’s more amusing attacks is what CNBC and the media in general may be most guilty of—creating a “false sense of urgency.” That accusation actually came from Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer, whose show Stewart “visited” in response to Cramer’s use of NBC assets to defend himself. Dora sweetly inquired as to whether Cramer understood that he was being picked on not for individual mistakes, but because his sense of urgency ultimately helped to hyper-inflate the bubble.

This is one of the pitfalls of technology. We all have a false sense of urgency. Not too long ago, if you called someone and their answering machine picked up, you left a message, and that was that. Today, if you call someone and they don’t call you back, you text them. If that fails, you check on their Facebook page to see if they’ve updated their status. And so on. In journalism, the rush to be first has trumped the rush to be right. Stories that aren’t ready get pushed and then have to be revised or rewritten. This was the case recently when The New York Times, in a rush to get news online about Caroline Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from consideration for the Senate, printed speculation about why she opted out—and then ended up backing away from it in later versions of the story. Furthermore, ongoing stories such as the market crash become self-fulfilling prophecies and the equivalent of yelling “Fire!” in a movie theatre. It might be time for everyone to hit the pause button.

Cramer on The Daily Show, March 12, 2009:

The initiative, which has been coined "TV Everywhere" would basically require consumers to verify that they already pay for a distribution service (cable, telco, or satellite) in order to view cable content online. There have already been talks with major programmers, including Viacom, parent of MTV and Nickelodeon; Discovery; News Corp., parent of FX; and Time Warner's own TNT and TBS channels.

In an interview with Advertising Age, Bewkes described "TV Everywhere" as a "natural extension of the existing model"—a model where distributors pay programmers a fee to carry their channel. Those fees can range from a few quarters to a few dollars per subscriber. According to industry consulting firm SNL Kagan, distributors paid programmers north of $22 billion in license fees last year.

There is, of course, already a slew of cable programming available for free online. USA shows such as Burn Notice and Monk are available on Hulu, which is co-owned by USA parent NBC Universal. TNT offers free episodes of some of its original programming on its own website, as do many other networks.

But much of cable programming isn't available online in the same way as broadcast fare. Distributors have made some inroads in making the case that their value as a programming service declines as more content becomes available on other platforms for free to everyone. Why, they wonder, are they paying a premium for content, if the content is not exclusive to them?

Programmers counter that making some of their content available on other platforms often serves a big promotional purpose—it brings viewers to the channel and raises ratings, which is good for the operators. But with the economy tanking and ad dollars on the decline, the last thing programmers want to do is derail the license fee gravy train. That means the operators have some rare leverage. Content may be king, but right now the distributors want content to also move like a king—one square at a time instead of all over the board.

Bewkes's push is a good one for the industry. But at this stage of the game, is he trying to put toothpaste back in the tube?

Unless there is a simple, one-keystroke way for consumers to prove they subscribe to a distribution service, the risk to programmers is they lose a valuable platform. Consumers don't always follow or care about the economic reasons behind a particular move. They are also very finicky about having to jump through hoops online, and, furthermore, might be wary of their cable or satellite company acting as a gatekeeper.

Still, if the industry can get behind this and find a technological way to do it that doesn't alienate consumers, it could be a vital first step to preserve one revenue stream while building another one. In other words, a rare win-win.

At some point soon, a bunch of Harvard academics and industry leaders will gather to put together a comprehensive case study trying to explain how the media industry imploded in the twenty-first century.

Let me save them some time and clue them in on a big factor: The media had a product that people were paying for, and they decided to give it away for free.

Yes, there are other reasons, too. Classified advertising, the backbone of the industry, dried up as sites such as Craigslist emerged. Lots of other advertising that once relied on newspapers also migrated to the Internet. Somehow, though, that seems like it may have been a fixable problem.

Ultimately, the decision by ninety-nine percent of the newspapers in the country to make their content free online will have to be looked at as one of the great business blunders of all time. And hopefully the entertainment industry is watching and learning, because they are making the same mistake.

This is not a dinosaur argument against the Internet. It's a valuable platform, and if the industry hadn't panicked in terms of how to use it, it might have become a little profit center rather than a drain sucking away their business.

Immediately after news broke about the demise of The Rocky Mountain News (I saw it on a Twitter via Facebook, of course), someone asked why they didn't just go to a web-only business model. Here's why: Because while getting rid of the paper and trees would realize immense savings, it still wouldn't be enough to cover the actual salaries of the writers and the editors who put the paper out. Lots of newspapers will tell you their websites make money. What they don't tell you is they are not putting the costs of producing content for their sites into the equation, because those costs are kept within the costs of producing the print edition.

The newspaper industry became obsessed with drawing traffic to their websites and figured that advertising dollars would more than make up for the lost revenue from readers who no longer bought the paper (at least I hope that's what they were betting, otherwise we might need a warrant to arrest publishers for assisted suicide). That was wishful thinking even in the best of economic times, and a recipe for disaster these days. It didn't help matters when the Associated Press and other wire services started giving their content away online, which certainly forced some hands.

There are those who will counter all this was inevitable because even on pay sites, people were stealing content and posting it, and this is no different than what happened to the music industry. There is a lot of truth to that. However, one has to believe that the same brilliant engineers that have made it possible for me to watch videos or read content online would eventually figure out a way to stop someone from copying it. And these days, many of us now gladly shell out cash to download songs.

The television industry is struggling with the same issues. Hulu is a great site, but I don't really think NBC would rather have people watch episodes of Saturday Night Live online vs. on TV until the ads it runs on the site cost as much as the ones it sells for the network.

Somewhere there is a solution waiting to be found. As a former reporter for a few publications that are in imminent danger of going under, I hope we don't have to wait much longer. Ultimately, the fewer voices there are in the world, the easier it is for bad things to happen. The watchdog will have no bite.

And for those who argue that bloggers and citizen journalists can pick up the slack, I leave you with a quote from former Baltimore Sun reporter and creator of HBO's The Wire, David Simon: "The Internet is skimming the froth of commentary from the first-generation newsgathers...They have parasitically achieved immediacy and relevance by co-opting the debate, the humor, the rage, and the provocation that results from news product—without actually investing or committing in any serious way to the systemic acquisition of that news."

Pretty good, huh? I found it for free on the Internet.

Fear not. This is not another "I joined Facebook and all I got (and contributed) were these lousy status updates" column. Those have been done to death by better hacks than me. Sure, I'm concerned about whether technology is the great connecter or is just presenting an illusion of connectedness. I wonder whether social networking is enabling more communicating or just creating a one-way street of self-promotion and self-flagellation. And lastly I am amazed about how we all claim to worry about our privacy or lack thereof in the digital age, and yet so freely give it up without really thinking about the implications.

No, the question here is how and when Facebook and Twitter and the rest will make money off of all of us. Just how much is "on my way home from the movies" worth? How about "just bought some new pointy shoes?" What about, "I'm making soup for my kids?" These are all updates and tweets from friends of mine.

FORTUNE Magazine just spent six pages exploring this topic, and while it raised plenty of hypotheticals of how Facebook could become the next Google, it didn't really make a concrete case that it was inevitable.

It's not that the information to make money isn't there. As Jessi Hempel, the writer of the FORTUNE piece notes, Facebook presents advertisers with the potential "to eavesdrop on every phone conversation you've ever had," and that, as well as other elements of the site, is what makes corporations "salivate."

At first glance, those status updates and tweets cited above look pretty benign. But if the girl who likes pointy shoes suddenly gets advertisements from Jimmy Choo on her profile page, or the guy making soup for his family is besieged with ads from Campbell's, it makes sense. Of course, Facebook is already trying to do this, but not exactly in any targeted way if my own profile page is any indication. I've got an ad for a Mac Book (already own one) and a Lexus (live in New York City) on my page, and nothing in my profile indicates any interest in either of those products.

A problem with getting really targeted with Facebook users is that they tend to be a sensitive lot. They don't like to feel that they are part of what is ultimately supposed to be a money-making venture. They get outraged if they think they are being pimped, as was the case a few years ago, when Facebook started publicizing purchases its users had made at other online retailers. The company quickly shut the program down.

Thus, the real challenge for Facebook is not only figuring out how to make money, it's convincing its users that trying to generate revenue is not a bad thing. Unfortunately for Facebook, its users tend to view it as public television (never mind that many members—including this one—use it as a marketing tool) and they don't like pledge drives.

Ultimately, though, someone has to pay for this stuff. With each user the company adds—and it's approaching 200 million members—its costs go up. So here is one idea: subscription fees. I conducted an unscientific survey of two people, and both said they'd be willing to pony up $50 a year to be on Facebook, and neither is exactly loaded.

Sure some will balk at this idea and counter that if Facebook charges, someone else will just set up a rival service for free. But Facebook has already shown its worth to its members, and while it's true that there is probably a large percentage of people who join Facebook, check it out for a bit, and drop out, there are just as many living their lives on the site who would likely not see a small user fee as unreasonable. And if the choice was pay a fee or be barraged with ads and have your information sold to marketers, well that's a no-brainer.

Whether its television, newspapers, or the Internet, this stuff has to ultimately be paid for or it goes away. If we can pay a couple of bucks for a bottle of water every day without batting an eye, then a couple of bucks to read someone's trivial status updates and find out what happened to that girl who dumped you in third grade is a bargain.

What happened to the DVD business reminds me of what happened to ABC's game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? It was ten years ago this year that ABC premiered the Regis Philbin hit in the summer and saw it take off. Before too long, it became a regular on the schedule, and since ABC didn't really have many other hits, the network began to run Millionaire on multiple nights, peaking with four in 2000. While the bucks rolled in for awhile, ABC didn't really use that coin to develop other hits, because it thought it had found its "final answer."

We all know the rest of the story. Oversaturation. Millionaire began a quick fade, and less than three years after its premiere, it was dead. New York Times scribe Bill Carter attributed the cause of death to "complete exhaustion, compounded by overexposure to harsh competitive elements" when he wrote of the show's cancellation in 2002.

Those words could be applied to the DVD business, too. The rush to get the DVD out fast kills the anticipation and decreases the value of the product to the consumer. In the era of the VCR, it took a year—if not years—for movies to move from the theatre to Blockbuster. In the DVD era, it became months or, in some cases, weeks. That also doesn't do a whole lot for the box office. Yes, the hits always perform, but mid-level movies have suffered greatly at the theatre since consumers know that in a few weeks, it'll be out on DVD.

If that wasn't enough, the studios decided to jam as much library product as possible onto the shelves, as well. Not just movies, but hundreds of old TV shows. Sure, some took off, but most just took up space. Consumers, who used to gobble up everything, felt overwhelmed and just walked away.

Some will point the finger at piracy or technology, blaming the emerging Blu-ray format or online video downloads from sites like Hulu. And it's true that all of these are putting a stake through the DVD business once and for all, but none of them will have to swing the hammer very hard to finish the job—the studios already did all the heavy hitting.

Yes, Springsteen will deliver. He always has. It's not about that. In a world where everything is for sale, the one constant was that he wasn't. For a guy who admirably refuses to sell his songs for commercials or go corporate in any way, performing for the biggest commercial/corporate event in the world leaves a bad taste.

Of course, he has his reasons. The music industry has changed dramatically since Springsteen sold 15 million copies of Born in the USA (and you can bet he would've laughed off the idea of playing the Super Bowl back in them days). He needs a promotional platform for his new release at a time when radio is, well, nowhere.

That said, Springsteen has an audience that pretty much follows him anywhere. It seems unlikely that he'll pick up a whole new generation of listeners by doing twelve minutes in Tampa.

Many will say, lighten up. After thirty-five years of great music, if Springsteen wants to have some fun playing the world's biggest media event, why begrudge him? Perhaps just because the event seems to be in direct contrast to what Bruce Springsteen is about. The Super Bowl and all that goes with it has become a symbol of a culture designed to make us feel bad for what we don't have instead of good for what we do. Even in this year's slimmed-down form, the Super Bowl is still about luxury boxes, extravagant parties, and corporate shenanigans. Oh, and somewhere in there is a game. That's a far cry from the humble gratitude and selflessness that Obama spoke of during his inauguration, whose various ceremonies also featured a performance by Springsteen.

The NFL's motivations for wanting Springsteen are much easier to understand. Besides the fact that he's the biggest name out there, the league is still reeling five years later from Janet Jackson's Nipplegate. They want to keep playing it safe with MOR rockers (Paul McCartney, The Stones, Tom Petty). I know this will sting us Springsteen fans, but that's what they see in him. He's not going to mess up their party. They don't have to worry about him suddenly belting out "Atlantic City" or that down and dirty acoustic version of "Born in the USA," which makes it perfectly clear what that song's really about. Instead, I predict we'll get the obligatory new song, "Glory Days," (which is when I'll hit the bathroom) and "Born to Run." Sooner or later, the NFL will have to start thinking about their fan base under the age of 35 again when they book these halftime acts.

I will be watching, and I will still get a little thrill when Bruce counts 1-2-3-4 at the crescendo of "Born to Run." But when it's all over, to borrow from another Springsteen classic, "My baby and me, we're gonna ride to the sea and wash these sins off our hands." 

Considering that not too long ago many were expecting CBS and Couric to call it quits, this, along with her beefed up presence on the web and elsewhere on the network (including a mini newscast during last week's highly watched AFC Championship game), would seem to indicate a renewed faith between the two. She's gained a little in the ratings and her campaign coverage was also widely praised, so now is the time to pump her up.

While it's easy to write off this move as a low-risk stunt (and it is), it is also an acknowledgement that a new approach in promoting and marketing news is desperately needed. CBS News has been mired in third place since long before Couric's arrival, and all of the evening newscasts have seen their ratings dramatically shrink over the last twenty years as cable and the Internet have taken center stage. One can argue that the whole idea of a 6:30 p.m. evening news show has long been a dinosaur headed to extinction. Would viewers and the networks be better served by pushing their evening newscasts into the 7 p.m. hour or, gasp, even into prime time, when more viewers—and, more importantly, younger viewers—are available?

The problem with that is the economics. Syndicated shows that usually run in the 7-8 p.m. hour, such as Entertainment Tonight, generate a lot more money for the television stations that carry CBS. They also serve as a better lead-in to the network's prime time entertainment programming than a newscast. While at some point it's possible a network will strip a newscast across five nights in prime time the way NBC is stripping Jay Leno in the 10 p.m. hour, that will say more about the economics of entertainment programming than it will a belief in the value of news programming.

The economics of news doesn't help, either. While cost-cutting has been the norm for two decades—closing bureaus here and abroad, relying more on pool footage—the costs for talent have only gone up. Couric pulls down an estimated $15 million a year. That's a big salary for a low-rated time period. Her competitors, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson, aren't exactly hurting for pocket change, either.

At some point, hopefully someone will figure out how to make a viable prime time newscast that can both entertain and illuminate. If it can be done every week with 60 Minutes, than doing it everyday isn't a stretch.

This is not the first time that inaugural events have been licensed. As Farhi notes, Bill Clinton also licensed events to HBO and CBS.

While one understands the need for Obama to try to cover the costs of his inauguration (likely the most expensive ever), there is something just a little tawdry about these deals. It could be seen as putting the networks in the position of paying for news and at the same time potentially making them beholden to their rights holders.

Well, if the Commission is going after the Globes for giving the finger, it might as well go after Seinfeld, too. There's no statute of limitations on indecency as far as I know, and fans of the show will remember the episode where George becomes convinced that everyone, particularly a waitress at their hangout diner, is flipping him off.

The episode, titled "The Pledge Drive," first aired in 1994. Between that initial airing and the hundreds of times it has run in syndication, the FCC could help the government bailout a few more industries with the fines it could collect.

Obviously we're not really advocating going after a fifteen-year-old episode of Seinfeld. We're just trying to make the point that somehow America has seen someone flipping the bird in prime time before and has managed to march on. I bet we'll survive the Aronofsky finger, too.