The mainstream media did not fail to notice that President Obama, during his first press conference, called on a blogger to ask a question. There is a clip here of the question put to the President at the White House.
This was the very first time that the President of the United States, during an official press conference, recognized the status of a Web-only blogger — in this case, from the Huffington Post.
According to some reports, including the one linked above, the established journos at the White House were quick to start whingeing about how the Huffington Post had pushed its way onto their patch — and, worse, actually got to put a question to the President.
It should not have been so alarming, of course, because Barack Obama owes his political success to the Web. Just think of the “Yes We Can” video on YouTube, or his masterful strategic usage of platforms like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter to raise money and mobilize support. As I have written elsewhere, Obama is America’s first Web-generation President. No surprise that he’s bypassing the Old Boys in the press corps and officially recognizing political bloggers.
In Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom we analyze in detail what we describe as e-ruptions that are challenging and overthrowing established notions of status — and in particular, that of institutionalized “professions” like journalism. There has been a great deal of commentary (including in this blog) about the decline, and slow death, of newspapers as they struggle to deal with the impact of the Web. There has been less focus on an even more powerful disruption: the Web challenge to the professional status pretentions of journalists as the economic basis of their industry is collapsing and new forms of journalism emerge on the Web.
The Huffington Post question put to President Obama is an exalted example of this powerful disruption, which is not only impacting journalists but many established professions. It comes, to be sure, at a bad time for newspaper journalists. But they can at least comfort themselves with the knowledge that they are not the only institutionalized profession whose status and legitimacy are being challenged by these powerful forces.
