I don't mind if I do!

“The king is dead long live the king… “

So Mr M Jackson passed way… uninsurable for his 50 gigs… @ the O2, he did not make his final curtain… my facebook… has been awash with thoughts and well-wishers, the radio airways playing different Jacko tunes. The UK charts showing a surprising number of downloads for only 4 days notice… Michael Jackson… is dead… and I wonder was he a puppet or a puppeteer?

So what does his death mean to me? His death is acknowledgement that this is the week; of all weeks which pronounces the death of traditional media – television broadcasting, editorial print & radio, with its replacement being social-media as the king (which we all already knew) – but we did not have a comparable benchmark to hang it off…

So why is the passing of MJ the bench mark? Well, in this week, while we have had some reason for a nostalgic trip about a tune, a feeling, a flush of intrigue about how an individual who grew up surrounded by the stardom created by media exploitation, who became such a global superstar – that he was given carte-blanch to make so many decisions, that he even managed to orchestrate the melt down of his own face! – While, back on planet earth… A nation of strangers… ( whose names we do not know) were using (social-media channel) twitter to shout out to the world, and gather and generate attention… for what was their nations reported injustice. 100s and 1000s of voices were reporting their own stories in bites of 140 characters – on a seemly “quiet” broadcasting medium.

#Iranelection
Iran election turnouts exceeded 100% in 30 towns, website reports

So… while the old school music blipped binary formations of mass music downloads on to digital music players, the rest of us listened and viewed the plight of the Iranian people on twitter – then watched as it (slowly) filtered through to the tv stations, and onto the broadsheets… One by one, people that I followed on my twitter account were changing their icons to green to show support, keywords were slipping through and messages of support were passing through all the media channels, to such an extent that it was impossible not to have some knowledge or awareness of what was going on in Iran.

So this Sunday morning as the MJ story, turned into a story, of how a story, about a story, is reported, because sensationalism sells – Facebook, and Google hurriedly announced a Persian language version of their sites… so that those nobodies, who were also making the news could have another channel to access and communicate to the world…. old mass-media is dead…. long live the the king.