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Run. Don’t walk to buy The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. One of the benefits or miseries of working at GCI (depending on your perspective) is the GCI Book Club. Throughout the year the team reads business books and we discuss them as a group and hopefully the occasional passionate argument or knock ‘em, drag ‘em out fight will break out that means people are really engaged. The Long Tail has incited that type of reaction (no actual fights yet but I am hopeful).

No matter how you may feel about new media, The Long Tail is very well written by a very smart guy (editor of Wired). Anderson gives an extremely compelling overview of the disruption that has occurred in mass culture, through new media, the loss of traditional barriers to entry and the subsequent empowerment of individual creative types and microentrepreneurs.

A few weeks ago I participated on a CPRS panel on the topic of communications during mergers, crisis etc… Instead of going through the traditional “to do” list (ie. make sure media lists are updated, have home phone numbers etc..) I decided to engage the audience around the impact of new media and the five second news cycle in crisis management. There were a few nods, some glazed stares and some truly horrifed looks. During the question period one woman stood up and basically said “new media was all well and good but at the end of the day face to face contact was critical.” Because I wasn’t really sure what to say (wanting to be on the side of the angels) I nodded eagerly in agreement…but I wonder. A few days earlier, by chance, I happened to be part of a staff discussion on new media. Interestingly enough the group, dominated by young PR professionals, was divided on how important actual physical contact was. Some felt instant messaging was in fact better. I raised the same question with a friend of mine, an HR professional, who vehemently contended that being in the same physical space was critical for important discussions. She said, “Imagine how you would feel being emailed ‘you’re fired’.” Yup, that would be grim but I am not sure today’s 16 year old will feel the same in the future. She may just shrug and email her very best friend, who she has never actually met, for solice.