Two worlds collided at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival this week. Online media of all sorts is coming of age, and the festival was one of its biggest defining moments. The event aims to bring together new technologies and their practitioners to spur innovation. While the mainstream press was barely present, the conference-cum-weeklong-party was more thoroughly reported on than some national political conventions. And central to the whole movement are companies from the Bay Area, ranging from San Francisco news aggregators like Digg.com to giant video-sharing sites like Google's YouTube.One moment at the festival the other day signified the passing of a baton from old media to new media.
Dan Rather, the 75-year-old former CBS anchorman, had just finished a keynote speech in which he exhorted American journalism to "find its spine," after which he was whisked backstage for a series of television interviews.
Out on a patio of the Austin Hilton Hotel, Rather courteously spoke for 20 minutes with Amanda Congdon, the 26-year-old former host of the video blog Rocketboom, who has turned her 15 minutes of online fame into a gig with ABC News' Web site.
The ironies of their conversation abound. Rather, who once epitomized old media, now works for Mark Cuban's online video news service, HDNet. Congdon, who helped pioneer video blogging, works for ABC News.
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