New Media as True Media

As you can tell by now, I generally blog about the technology that impacts my everyday life, which is almost exclusively personal tech. I had a fairly new experience with how technology impacts media over the weekend, and I found myself quite pleased with the progress that the mainstream media is making with technology.

I introduced you to my main blog about the Major League Baseball draft a couple weeks ago, and as it has been growing, the demand for real time information has grown. For those of you that don't know (I assume none of you do), the college baseball season opened up this past Friday. Georgia Tech hosted Missouri State at their on-campus stadium off of 5th Street. Knowing that I wanted to be there as part of my blogging coverage, I contacted the Media Relations group in the Athletics Department at Georgia Tech to see if they allowed bloggers to be credentialed in a similar way to newspapers and radio.

The reception I received was pleasantly surprising. Though they did not have space in the press box for me on opening weekend, they were going to leave me complimentary tickets so that I could cover the game in any way I could. The best surprise came when I picked up the tickets and found that I was three rows up right behind home plate, one of the best seats in the house.

I went to the three games, and with live Twitter coverage and daily game write-ups, I've been established as a real member of the sports media in the area, something I didn't expect, since I don't write for such mainstream outlets as newspapers, who have been losing business to blogs at an astounding rate. I now have found myself with free season tickets and a press pass, as well as invitations to other colleges in the area.

New media offers new ways to cover traditional events, and my latest encounter with that has left me feeling very encouraged with the way media is going. It may be awhile until true real-time information is always present, but things are moving in the right direction.