ALEX BEAM writes on tragedies and statistics:

There is an old, politically incorrect saying in newsrooms: How do you change a front-page story about massive flood devastation into a 50-word news brief buried inside the paper? Just add two words: ”In India.”

But it hasn’t worked out that way this time, has it? We had massive flood devastation in India, and it’s made the front pages. And more, as Mickey Kaus notes:

By the side of the road yesterday in the non-rich Palms neighborhood of Los Angeles, earnest teenagers in the pouring rain covering themselves with plastic sheeting while they held up signs trying to flag down cars and raise donations to benefit the Asian tsunami survivors. … The effort seemed futile on several levels, but also touching–and something new. I’ve never seen this sort of thing in L.A. before.

Or just look at the stunning response to Amazon’s fundraising — currently heading toward $15 million. Part of that’s the new media effect, I think. As Neil McIntosh writes:

For the first time, powerful coverage of a huge news event was not brought to you purely by established media. An army of “citizen journalists” played a new role, perhaps all the more vital considering the effect vivid reportage, online and off, has had on the subsequent fundraising efforts.

It’s not just blogs, of course, but all the new media — making parts of the world that used to seem distant seem much closer. And so I think that Beam’s analysis, while not entirely wrong, isn’t nearly as right as it would have been ten or twenty years ago.

UPDATE: Read this, too.