On Super Tuesday, MTV once again pushed the edge of the media envelope, deploying our Choose or Lose Street Team to twenty-three states to cover the election like never before. Armed with the latest generation of cellular technology -- the Nokia N95 multimedia phone -- we eliminated the need for not just satellite trucks, but even laptops. Streaming live video to MTVNews.com directly from our handsets using new Flixwagon software from My Frame, Inc., we covered events and garnered interviews that were turned around at the studio into twenty-six on-air packages.

In case you missed any of the Georgia coverage, here are some of the highlights: young volunteers from the Clinton and Obama campaigns; a voter registration drive at Georgia Tech; the intersection of Super Tuesday and Fat Tuesday from a bipartisan group of revelers; after-parties with rowdy Obama fans, subdued friends of Mitt, and the ever-optimistic Ron Paul army; and even the Georgia House of Representatives' minority leader, Rep. DuBose Porter.

(Video source / get embed)

All elements of the news media are keeping a keen if wary eye on emerging technology like video-streaming handsets in the hopes of staying ahead of the curve -- or in some cases, simply surviving. Right here in Atlanta, GA, I was part of a panel discussion on "How Electronic Media is Affecting the Political Campaigns," hosted by the Atlanta Press Club on Thursday, February 7th. (Hear the entire program courtesy of the Georgia Podcast Network). The fact that seasoned professionals of journalism like former Atlanta Journal-Constitution national editor and now Southern Political Report editor Tom Baxter and CNN.com senior producer John Helton were seated at the same table as local bloggers like yours truly and James Williams of Drifting Through the Grift was itself a testament to the APC's recognition of the changing media landscape.

While the focus of that panel was on the impact of new media on the presidential campaign itself, questions from the audience returned the discussion to a theme raised prominently during APC's previous foray into the internet: how (and whether) "citizen journalists" can be trusted. However, the saga of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, to name but one, stands as evidence that professional journalism credentials are no guarantee of authenticity. And as Mr. Williams put it, "It only takes getting busted one time" to put an end to the unofficial "career" of a citizen journalist in a market where reputation is currency -- and where false statements can echo forever in Google caches and the Internet Archive.

A related concern more pertinent to the Street Team's N95 onslaught was the sheer volume of content being generated in new media and how to find value in the torrent. Mr. Helton of CNN raised points on two sources of this glut of information: the campaigns themselves, and the armies of supporters (and detractors) who comment on stories about the campaigns. "We're almost in competition with the candidates now, too," Helton said of the prolific event coverage and low-budget advertisements the campaigns can post on their own YouTube channels for free, organic propagation. And in order to deal with the bottom-up content, Mr. Helton said that CNN.com had to hire "an entire level of staff just to moderate comments."

To filter all of the new content, however, smaller blogs can be as much a part of the solution as a source of the problem. Just as the producers at MTV News chose only the best niblets from our nearly ten hours of Nokia-streamed footage to produce the thirty second on-air packages, a trusted blogger can be a filter for his or her readers whose job it is to consume as much raw content as possible and re-distribute, with some critical analysis, only the pieces that may benefit the audience. This is precisely the charge given to the new Street Team at our orientation by journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen when he urged us to develop a topical "national beat" in addition to our geographically-defined local beats -- our home states. A similar filtering process is going to be required to make the most of ad hoc video journalism when handsets like the N95, and the advanced 3G cellular network required to stream the video, proliferate in the United States over the coming year.

One night after the APC panel, the conversation on new media continued as close to 160 technological entrepreneurs and aficionados gathered for dinner to kick off the Southern Social Media Conference 2008, or SoCon08 for short. While much of the focus of SoCon08 was on using the web for business purposes, among the loosely organized dinner discussions -- this was an "unconference," after all -- were two tables on "Citizen Media" and a third table on "Bringing Politics to the Web." At the main conference program the following day, with closer to 280 in attendance at Kennesaw State University, there were also breakout workshops on "Using Social Networking to Improve the World" and "Citizen Media: Adopt a Journalist or Be One." The latter included participants from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Turner Broadcasting, and Morris News Service, and was moderated by conference co-orgnanizer Leonard Witt. Mr. Witt is also the Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication at KSU and runs the Public Journalism Network website.

"It is clear that traditional news operations and the citizen media contingents are certainly listening to each other," Mr. Witt said, citing Dr. Rosen's new Beat Blogging project as an example. "These kinds of experiments are happening everywhere. Some will work, some will not, but at least the news media are trying new things with citizens and not stonewalling."

Mr. Witt was particularly excited about the potential of reader-reporter interaction enabled by new technologies, such as those surrounding mobile phones. "Recently I have been telling people to keep an eye on what looks like frivolous technologies, especially those that the techno geeks start adopting early. A year ago, I saw Twitter as a waste of time." Twitter is a web-based "micro-blogging" service that enables people to communicate, very briefly, with their social networks using their web browser, instant messenger client, or mobile phone via SMS (text message). The Twitter traffic, based on the question, "What are you doing," can include such superficial personal updates as "Getting coffee," or "Desperately want an iPhone," but Mr. Witt explained its citizen journalism utility to the SoCon08 workshop with an example from Davos, Switzerland.

Robert Scoble is a web pioneer and consultant who attended the World Economic Forum in Davos in late January, and he also used a Nokia N95 to stream live videos via the Flixwagon rival Qik as he interviewed people at the conference. His Twitter account alerted people to the fact that he was beginning a live broadcast, and his viewers in turn used Twitter and Qik to text message their suggested interview questions back to him. (I used Twitter myself while broadcasting live web video -- albeit using a much heavier laptop and webcam assembly -- from the Iowa caucuses, taking editorial suggestions relayed by my Twitter friends that they culled from a few hundred viewers in a chat room attached to the video player. A Twitter widget on the same page kept viewers apprised of my whereabouts and activities that I sent from my mobile phone.)

"Reporters can quickly notify segments of their audience or their editors where they are, what they are working on and with whom they are talking -- and ask for help or advice, all in 140 characters or fewer." Mr. Witt said. "How else could you quickly notify so many people without really intruding on their space? So, yes, I am paying more attention to Twitter, and I think folks in the news media profession should also."

Even without Twitter, the mainstream media is experimenting with the potential of handsets like those used by Scoble and the MTV Street Team. Last year, Reuters news agency distributed "MoJo" kits (including N95 handsets) to a number of journalists. While live-streaming was not in the mix, the ability to shoot high quality video and photographs, edit video clips on the handset, and upload all of the content for a multimedia story without a laptop or wired internet connection is a major leap in itself.

One SoCon08 attendee sees enough potential in the intersection of new media and politics to devote an entire doctoral dissertation to it. Kristin English is a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism, and she wrote her master's thesis on ten candidate blogs from five U.S. Senate contests in the 2006 mid-term election. Ms. English sees this interactivity that is enabled by new technology as a key to keep the consumers of the media -- the voters -- engaged in the process. "One of my major impressions coming out of SoCon08 is about knowing your audience. In 'e-politics,' I think this is especially important. Technology should be used to make connections and create dialogue among people about topics that interest them."

The impact of emerging technology will depend all three players in the political game: the candidates, the voters, and the media. "Candidates generally find a way to utilize a medium to their advantage, but they have to walk the line between control and open conversation," Ms. English said. "Independent actors have proved in recent years that their impact is greater than initially anticipated. As for the media, some are embracing technology as a tool for their trade, but others still fear it."

Whether audience engagement through new media actually translates into votes and political victories was the subject of some skepticism at the APC panel on Thursday, but this weekend Ms. English simply pointed to the results so far. "The most important trend I see this season is people are discussing politics, are engaged in the process and, most importantly, are voting in record numbers."

From Super Tuesday through SoCon08, it was a busy week for new media in Georgia, but the speculation is far from over. As the mainstream media continue to watch the output of experiments like Street Team '08, there will be plenty of fodder for panels, conferences, and much soul-searching from traditional journalists about how to adapt and survive on this new frontier. The next round of vibrant discussion will be hosted at Georgia Tech on February 22nd and 23rd at the "Journalism 3G" symposium.