Question:  What's the difference between LeBron James and Tiger Woods?  Answer:  One is vertical and the other is horizontal. 

LeBron James runs, jumps, leaps, flies.  He's vertical.  Tiger Woods drives, walks, putts, and occasionally pumps his fist.  He's horizontal.

Here's another way to look at it:  LeBron James is new media, while Tiger Woods is old media.  That's because new media is vertical, while old media is horizontal.

The idea that media can be vertical or horizontal has been around for a while.  Mike Shatzkin (aka "Mr. Vertical") has written extensively on the subject.  He says new media is characterized by "vertical, subject-specific organization.  It naturally facilitates clustering around subjects."  New media is Google, facebook, twitter, mogulus.  New Media is community, grassroots, bottom-up, messy, unpredictable, improvisational, tattoos, fun.  New media is LeBron.

By contrast, old media is "horizontal" in terms of subject matter--"that is, very broad and format specific."  Old media is the New York Times, Random House, and CBS.  Old media is corporate, topdown, button-down, shirt tucked in, neat, tidy, controlling, calculating.  Old media is Tiger.

An excellent example of new media at its finest took place on ConversantLife yesterday with the live stream interview with Jon Foreman.  On Tuesday we received an email from Jon's publicist letting us know he was in the middle of a three-day fast for Darfur.  Would we be interested in writing up a news story for the ConversantLife audience?  More or less a horizontal approach.  Yeah, we could do that, but what if we  went vertical instead and actually interviewed Jon, and not just a regular interview, but a live streaming video interview where people could watch in real time and make comments and ask questions right on the screen?  The publicist liked the idea.  Jon really liked the idea.

By 9:00 Wednesday morning, we were in Jon's studio, and by 10:30 we were streaming a conversation between CJ and Jon about fasting and Darfur and the critical needs of our world and what one person can do to make a difference. The interview, thank's to Jon's passion and commitment to global justice, was informative, inspiring, improvisational, and effective.  Not that a book or an article or even a television special about Darfur can't be effective.  But that kind of horizontal approach takes lots of time and usually lots of money. 

By contrast, the ConversantLife vertical approach was immediately effective as a leaping, jumping, grassroots, kind of messy approach that happened pretty much on the fly.  And despite the very short notice, more than 3,000 people participated in one way or another.

New Media vs. old media.  Vertical vs. horizontal.  LeBron vs. Tiger.  One may not be replacing the other, but in many ways the new is head and shoulders above the old.