With all the chatter about new media overtaking old, the primary election for Wisconsin’s 7^th Senate District demonstrated that print and other forms of old media are still holding office.

In fact, my house received a record number – in the dozens – of flyers and postcards, large and small, fancy and funny, caustic and colorful, mostly from front groups for or against the candidates.  The Photoshopping was typically done in a campy style that made the candidates look variously like a criminal, the author of a self-help book, even a king.  I had to laugh. I also got tons of autodial calls. These weren’t funny because by nature such calls are just so annoying. And TV ads ran in the race.

But there wasn’t much Senate primary chatter in my social media world, almost none. Nothing like I saw from the traditional media and communication methods.

If new media is king, what gives?

The prevalence of mailed lit and robocalls stemmed from the need of campaigns to target voters in a primary. I vote every election, even in obscure primaries. So candidates in this primary knew I’d vote, and they made sure, over and over, to get their message to me. They’re willing to spend money on me since I’m going to the polls either way. And some of my neighbors based on history weren’t voting, so dollars weren’t wasted on them. (In multiple ways, targeting is much harder on TV, where statewide and national electoral fights mainly take place, but the districts in this race were big enough to make some TV ads useful.)

Why less influence of new media? The candidates couldn’t rely just on my Facebook friends, the tweeters I follow or the bloggers I read to get their message to me on a local race that’s not of general interest – a state Senate primary. There was no way they could generate a chorus of genuine friends to influence me. My friends didn’t seem to care, at least I didn’t hear much about the race in my social media circles, and frankly, I wasn’t looking for their input.

So one of the winners last night was the traditional means of communicating. Though I’m betting that just like with a state Senate seat, this incumbent can’t hang on forever.

I always say that to understand what constitutes “news” to the news media, just look at the first three letters of the word: “New.” But that whole concept assumes that people get their news just from the news media. A recent quote I saw reminded me that people, particularly young people, are increasingly getting their news directly from other people via social media, and not directly from the traditional news media.

This anecdote from writer Nick Bilton in a New York Times article on Monday made the point for me. And for those trying to communicate messages, it highlights that we also need to find ways to directly reach our audiences, in addition to reaching out indirectly through news media.

As Bilton wrote:

I got my own hard lesson in this new “Me! Now!” world when some friends stopped by our house with their younger teenage cousin. As I started making coffee for our guests, she asked if she could use my laptop to “check the news.” I handed it over.

I was curious which news sites she was going to, so I asked, expecting to hear something like CNN or The New York Times, or maybe TMZ, the Hollywood gossip site. She looked up at me and said, “Facebook.” Then she turned back to the computer and continued reading.

“I thought you were going to read the news,” I said. “This is my news,” she replied. To many in her age group, news is not defined by newspapers, or broadcast television stations, or even bloggers or renegades. Instead, news is what is relevant to the individual — in her case, what Facebook calls its “news feed.”

This doesn’t mean she only sees messages about the mundane; links to mainstream news outlets, blogs and everything in between show up too. The only difference: It’s hyper-personalized.

Back from a recent trip to Seattle, I was taken by hearing that city officials there spent millions to build cruise ship ports – without any commitments from ships to dock. After a few years of no boats and much public controversy, one cruise ship came through. And then – lots and lots started showing up. I heard that today, a million people a year go through Seattle on cruise ships. The docks were built, and the ships came.

I also enjoyed watching the containers and container ships in the port. The activity suggested prosperity. Julia Taylor, president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, asked me a good question: Were the containers filled with goods being imported, or being exported? I don’t know, but which direction the goods were flowing does make a big difference.

Having lunch one day on Lake Union, a relatively small inland lake, it was impressive to see so many different types of boats. Yachts, houseboats, tour boats, motor boats, sailboats, ferries, kayaks, paddleboats and even seaplanes landing and taking off. So many transportation modes on one lake alone remind me how much people like choices when it comes to getting around.

Mayor Tom Barrett, Democratic candidate for Wisconsin governor, recently began airing a compelling TV ad about how he stood up against a thug threatening a woman on the street in a domestic dispute, and the horrific beating Barrett suffered. An interesting Journal Sentinel story today discussed the pros and cons of running the ad now.

I’m not privy to the candidate’s strategy or polling, but I have a hunch as to why they’re running the ad now.

A week or two ago, Republican candidate Scott Walker began running a TV ad called “Fighter” in which he held up boxing gloves. My guess is that Walker was trying to take a preemptive strike against Barrett’s perceived strength as a fighter and hero. Going after a perceived strength is a time-honored technique. Pres. George W. Bush supporters attached Sen. John Kerry’s heroic war record — and amazingly enough, they were successful. Early on in a mayoral race, Mayor John O. Norquist made an issue of candidate and Sheriff Dick Artison’s ceremonial use of horses at taxpayers’ expense. Artison didn’t use the horses much in ads after that, despite expectations he would.

Perhaps the Barrett people decided not to let Walker try to take the “fighter” mantle away from their candidate. If so, that’s a good strategy.

Barrett deserves to wear that mantle of fighter. Whatever you think of the gubernatorial candidates, Barrett has earned the praise, admiration and thanks he’s widely received for acting — on pure instinct, and at significant risk to himself — to help prevent a woman from being seriously injured or killed.

One of the rules of blogging is to blog consistently. I’ve been away lately. My bad. But I’m back.

Our community sends its sympathy to the victims of yesterday’s tragic collapse of a 30-foot concrete facade on Milwaukee County’s O’Donnell Parking Structure. It’s hard to imagine a sadder accident, one that resulted in a death and the injury of two others just as thousand of Milwaukeeans were heading out to celebrate the opening night of Summerfest.

As the story unfolds, the media will naturally scrutinize statements made by officials at the outset. Officials did the right thing by extending sympathies and promising to get to the bottom of what caused the facade to fail.

But it was interesting to observe an on-camera statement by County Executive Scott Walker on WTMJ-TV last night in which he said that no official reports allegedly existed of any maintenance backlog that would relate to the accident. A couple of minutes later in the same WTMJ piece, reporter Aaron Diamant contradicted Walker’s statement. Diamant said that county officials knew for six months about $600,000 in “critical” deferred maintenance at the garage, and that the garage was in “really bad shape.”

Which statement was right — the county exec’s or the reporter’s?

The media and especially WTMJ-TV are certain to analyze that initial statement by the county executive. If he was wrong, that’ll be an ongoing part of the story. It’s a reminder that when talking to the media, especially during a crisis, that statements need to be extremely carefully considered and 100% accurate.

This fascinating New York Times article focuses on a San Francisco man who is more plugged in to social media and communication gadgets than is probably good for him. Most people are going beyond traditional media outlets, even if this is an extreme example. For those trying to reach consumers or stakeholders, these “new media” sources can’t be ignored and must be embraced. These sources shouldn’t even be called “new” any more. Even “traditional” media outlets — TV and newspapers — are heavily invested in websites, Facebook pages, Twitter and user-generated content. They’re all part of today’s media world.

It appears that BP is creating a textbook case for future PR students with its ham-handed efforts to staunch its bad PR — while its massive oil leak flows unabated.

An obvious PR strategy would be to focus on fixing the leak, or at least do everything it can to stop the flow, and publicize that. And take your lumps. The lumps in this case are unavoidable and deserved.

But BP is employing a different strategy — put a cap on critics and media. And they think this will work?

Media outlets have been complaining about being denied access to the spill. The result: More bad press and a congressman complaining: http://snipurl.com/x9xms. Good move?

Not content to just go after the media, BP is targeting satirists. Specifically, BP is tangling with a Twitter writer who created a comic Twitter account – @BPGlobalPR. (It’s worth reading — well done.) According to this New York Times story I read over coffee this morning — http://snipurl.com/x9xw9 — the phony BP Twitter account had nearly 145,000 followers. As I write this post at 8:30 a.m. cst, it’s topped 150,000 and will continue to grow thanks to BP’s attack on it. The story in the New York Times reached millions and will be picked up by other media outlets, drawing more and more people to the Twitter feed. Was it worth trying to extinguish a humorist — and making him an even bigger read? You be the judge.