Does new media mean there is no common decency? Does it mean that gossip on twitter runs and ruins our lives? New media is penniless and runs on gossip to earn money from the eroding pie that we call news. Will anyone ever pay for a subscription to Twitter like the newspapers or cable news, probably not.

As someone said above, most of the tweets just parroted what other sites were reporting; often, Twitter (hardly alone) either crashed or was slow; and at least some of the information it helped spread turned out to be BS. (Jeff Goldblum?) So if Old Media don’t deserve any crowns of laurel for their Jackson coverage, neither, perhaps, do New — except TMZ.

As for that silly Chicago Trib article: My midnight guess is that it wasn’t written by a “dinosaur” at all. My guess is that it was written by a young, inexperienced reporter who was in way over his or her head and who was only on an important story like this because the Tribune, like so many once-great news organizations, has slashed its newsroom budgets and pushed dozens of skilled, exceptional journalists out the door.

A lot of the time, you really do get what you pay for — something that readers of the free Web and of stripped-down newspapers and magazines would do well to keep in mind.

The value of any information on it depends on its accuracy (determined case by case) and the credibility of the originator (determined over time, and subject to fluctuation).

In this case, the facts are straightforward. TMZ (of which I was previously not aware) got the scoop, and had the confidence to publish it. Sky News, for one, went big early, crediting TMZ. (At this point, Twitter alerted many of us to the story.) Other mainstream media were more cautious, until the LAT “confirmation”.

That’s a big range of approaches, and I think all of them proved right in this case. We were able to look at many sources, and make our own interim judgments based on their previous credibility.

Other brief points:

1. Time of death is a red herring. Someone can be known to be dead long before a coroner is in the position to confirm it and put a minute on it.

2. TMZ does gain a lot of credibility, but that would be eroded or destroyed if it takes a punt in the future and gets something wrong.

3. As for TMZ not developing its “one-fact” story – there was, and perhaps still is, only one fact that matters – Michael Jackson was dead. Everything else was speculation and filler.

To me, the role Twitter played here is just a bunch of people crowding around a big screen TV waiting for the next update to the news story. Point is, Twitter would be nothing without the “old media.”

Sad.

Indeed, many “breaking” stories today are exactly of this MJ type.

Sure, the scope of his existence merited immediate coverage, but what is the real influence of all this? How important is Michael Jackson or any celebrity in the grand scheme of things?

This is one of those cases where the rumor mill will always be faster than the press.

Conversely, Woodward and Bernstein “broke” Watergate through meticulous, years-long research and reporting.

Getting it right, at least the way I do the job, is vastly more important to getting it first.

The very best get it right and first.

Fascinating.

As for the “coma” reporting, technically that is not wrong. Definition of coma: a state of unconsciousness and unresponsiveness. Yes, being dead would yield the same thing, but at least this way the early reporting was safe based on the limited information.

Well, that and Ashton Kutcher.

Trying to push the importance of real time streams is getting a little ridiculous.