Jason Unger

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It's easy to hate on the mainstream media, especially in an Internet age where most companies don't understand Web publishing.

Newspaper sites don't write Web headlines. Magazine sites think people care what issue a story is from. And TV networks? They just think we're all pirates.

But there are a few broadcasters with mainstream podcasts that are getting it right — and believe it or not, they're actually worth watching.

NBC Nightly News w/Brian Williams
Almost immediately after each day's broadcast, the NBC Nightly News is available commercial-free as a podcast. It's not a special "online" edition — it's the entire show, sometimes even updated when the West Coast edition has something new.

We've talked about Brian Williams and the shift in media before, but what makes this broadcast interesting a day "late" is that it isn't really that late. While there's obviously news from the day, a lot of the content is timeless — so if I watch it a day or two later, it's still worth it.

Anderson Cooper 360
AC 360, iTunes' "Best new podcast" last year, doesn't feature all two hours of Cooper's nightly news program, but it's the first podcast I watch every morning. Running about a half-an-hour an episode, it normally has the latest news from the previous night.

Beyond the news, Cooper and newsgal (and former TechTVer Erica Hill) seem to speak to the Internet generation — they're not old and stogy, and love to laugh at videos of bears falling out of trees.

They also incorporate their daily blog contests — The Shot and Beat 360 — into the podcast, which are lighter fare.

Meet the Press
NBC also gets it right with Meet the Press, which it offers in its entirety, also without commercials.

Obviously, things have changed a bit since the show lost host Tim Russert, but since the show has never been about breaking news, it can be watched at any point during the week without feeling completely out of the know.

What mainstream media podcasts are you watching?

I hate when people say the Internet is going to completely replace deadtree media. It's completely ridiculous.

Printed media is not going to die, it's just going through a major shift in content. Obviously, newspapers are not real-time. Magazines are not real-time. The Internet is.

So what should a print publication do to survive? Embrace that it isn't real-time.

The latest conversation on this comes with the launch of Dispatches, a quarterly magazine based on analysis of events, not news. (Yes, they do have a Web site.)

Why this is newsworthy I don't know. But for some reason, it gets people asking: is print dead?

Mashable, for example, gets it completely wrong.

The printed magazine, content-wise, is just like a web page taken offline: nothing more, nothing less. Is there any hope for the print, then?

First off, people do not read online. Jakob Nielsen has been saying this for 11 years.

People do read offline. When you have paper in your hand, it's a lot easier to focus on one thing. Reading offline is a different experience. You're sitting on the sofa, feet up, relaxed and a drink in hand. You don't sit at your computer desk like that, do you?

Content presentation matters. Big time. Because of that, certain content fares better online while other is better in print. So why bother comparing the two? It's like putting a square peg in a round hole. It doesn't work.

The commenters in TechDirt's coverage of the story mostly seem to be missing the point. It's not about competing with the Internet; it's about offering content in-tune with the delivery and format of the publication.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of noise in this discussion: blogs, balance and bias all get thrown into the mix. Forget about that — it's a different topic.

It's not about the competition; it's about maximizing the user experience. And everytime you think of your users first, you win.

The case of these cheerleaders who recorded their beating of a fellow teenager, 16-year-old Victoria Lindsay, and then posted the video online, has received a lot of attention in the media.

And it should. There's obviously something wrong when a bunch of kids attack another and then promote it as some sort of badge to be proud of. (I'm not going to post the video, but it's easy to find on YouTube.)

The coverage, however, seems to be only focusing on YouTube and MySpace and whether they should block these kinds of videos. The father is even "blaming the Internet" for the beating, which is about as moronic as blaming the telephone for prank phone calls.

But the fundamental question lacking in this entire storyline is an easy one: why?

Why did these teens beat up the other girl? Was it completely unprovoked? Did they do it in order to post a video and get their "15 megabytes of fame"?

(On a side note, that's the dumbest phrase ever. Seriously, stop trying to be punny, people.)

I don't know the answer — the only thing I can find is that "[the] suspected teen attackers claim the victim had been threatening them through postings on her MySpace page," according to WESH, the local NBC affiliate. The cops say they filmed it so they could put it online, but how did it come to that in the first place?

Look, obviously I'm not advocating beating up people and posting videos of it online. It's stupid, and you're going to get arrested. Cyber-bullying is a serious thing, as the family of Megan Meier tragically found out.

But the media isn't doing their duty here. Following the Internet storyline is one segment of the coverage, but every one is making the assumption that that's why they beat her up — to post a video online.

Can we get the real facts here, please?

For a guy who has been making Web sites since he was 14, this might come as a surprise to you, but yes — I like magazines.

Yeah, I know, it's very anti-"new media" of me, but magazines still have a place in the world. (Newspapers do too, but that's another story.)

I actually subscribe to a number of magazines (mostly because I get them for free) and enjoy leafing through them.

Working for a magazine publishing company (running Web sites), I get astounded when print people think their product has any timeliness. It doesn't. You can't run news in magazines because it takes six weeks to produce the product and get it out to your readers.

So what does that distill magazines to? Feature stories, mostly. And big pictures.

Paper will always have an advantage over digital media when it comes to pictures. There's nothing like a two-page spread of a sunset or a slam dunk or the running of the bulls.

Magazines come with an experience that new media doesn't. You sit down, you relax, you kick your feet back and you open up a magazine. It's a completely passive relationship.

Online, the experience is much more active. You can post a comment, blog about it, or just surf away.

Magazines certainly have a place in the new media world. But they can't compete with digital communication when it comes to breaking news and participatory conversations.

It doesn't matter, though. It's a different experience. Not better, not worse. Just different. That's why I like them.