When newspapers once shaped the public discourse, politicians were warned not to pick fights with people who buy their ink by the barrel. They’d drown in negative coverage.

Now it’s not just ink.

It’s pixels distributed freely and published with such speed by ”mainstream” press and millions of bloggers, the candidates’ staffs can’t even keep up. While one political party has used text messaging and email to harness a grass-roots movement, the other party has decided to stop being accessible to the press during its convention.

There’s only one problem: It’s far too late to believe that shutting off interviews will stop the flow of information and rumors.

Welcome to the new media. Yet another example of the amazing times in which we live.

This piece in the NYT points out how Google is looking for ad dollars beyond paid search. Some of the big ad agencies don’t sound warm and fuzzy about the news.

Has Google figured out how to take a bit of market share here?

If so, the ad agencies will be forced to play ball or risk losing a chunk of their business. Access to the clients (who can change agencies like socks) could mean the erosion of agency fees so fiercely defended.

I not sure about you, but the mainstream press build-up to the Summer Olympics fixated more on air quality and less on athletes than I expected.

Interesting how many world records fell in a city that only a week or so before the opening ceremony had been lambasted for filthy air possible unfit for sport. L.A.’s air by comparison looked far dirtier here at home as world-class athletes performed at their highest levels in Beijing.

Another tidbit. This adidas ad I mentioned in February provided a better glimpse than I could imagine into the human spirit and teamwork in China. It will be hard to forget.

As a marketer, are you pre-pitching target publications long before you issue a press release?

If not, start now.

Unless your company is holding a quarterly earnings call or responding to a crisis with a prepared statement, the press release is a watered-down way to tell your story. There are fewer credential journalists today but more bloggers and empowered voices.

Which ones care about you — and do you have something they want to write about, talk about, comment on?

That’s what matters. What doesn’t matter as much is if your carefully crafted words with a dateline made it through the approval process and were distributed through traditional channels.

Now that the kids are back in school, it’s time for me to get off my tail. Online activity can be habitual. I ventured offline this summer to see how much things might change in daily life.

Guess what? Nothing dramatic happened while I was dogging it. Yes, the 3G iPhone was released. And Yahoo continued its aimless strategy to turn the company’s financial decline around. But overall, people took vacations. They went places. They cultivated relationships. They rested.

Usually my family goes to Bend, Oregon or Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, in the summer. This year, we stayed in San Diego. Here’s what I did on my summer stay-cation: Enjoyed two thick non-fiction works. Subscribed to eight magazines. Logged 2,500 miles of road cycling. Turned up my redesigned and simple site, www.marketingbean.com. Tuned career goals, business goals and roadmap. Watched my youngest make her first par after striking a perfect drive, a fairway metal, and two pure putts. Also watched her chip in from off the green. Did a load of home projects. Celebrated an anniversary. Played with two hilarious dogs. Watched the western world misread Beijing, then start fawning over it. Wrote a white paper. Wrote letters to my family. Got tempted by an iPhone but stuck with the BlackBerry.

If you feel like it’s time to take a break from the online world, it’s easy.

Simply do it.

Wondering what to read online?

This Vanity Fair chart provides guidance on what influential blogs cover what and — most importantly — where they land on the scale of scurrilous to earnest, and from news to opinion.

Inverted pyramids need not apply.

Tim Russert’s death hurts.

There’s heartbreak for his son, wife and father.

There’s sadness for NBC colleagues in a Washington D.C. news bureau covering a historial presidential election.

There’s a void for the 4 million viewers who let him into their homes Sunday mornings with Meet the Press, the program he transformed over a 17-year run.

Seventeen years in one place with joy, enthusiasm and dedication doesn’t happen much anymore. Tim Russert came on the scene before the Web exploded with 24/7 content, and newspapers began their slow decline.

No blogger, no radio host, no YouTube sensation can match what Tim Russert did. The “everyman” from Buffalo, New York, the son of a garbage man, showed us the meaning of transparency and authenticity long before it became fashionable, before public relations advisors claimed the words as a “strategy,” before a herd of marketers recognized honesty as valuable.

Why do we miss Tim Russert?

He’ll never be replaced.

That’s why.

Do you love concise? I mean, really short bursts and bites of copy? Seth Godin’s advice to write a 6-word classified ad is a good start on how to nail the message you want to send. For Generation Y members, write a Craigslist posting. You may have never seen a classified ad.

Here’s another fun way. Reporters and writers on deadline poring through shorthand notes or transcribing taped interviews also pretend. They picture themselves at the dinner table where they “tell it to Mom” — tell the story as if she had never heard it before, starting with the first sentence, the story’s lead.

Editors have passed the “Mom” advice along for decades. It keeps the “curse of knowledge” in check, the same affliction that can turn good PowerPoint presentations to data dump exercises that kill audience interest. About 10-20% of a reporter’s notes make it into the final story.

There’s a place for dense copy and complex sentence structures.

It’s never in marketing copy, newspaper stories, classified ads, or Craigslist postings.

At a year-end concert last night in the gym of my local elementary school, there was lots of technology to record the moment: a camcorder, digital camera or cellphone camera for each musician. Parents gathered around to get the best angle during the “Kodak” moment for both orchestra and band.

I shamelessly did the same, but not before being struck by the words on four big posters on the wall that make up the school’s code of business for its students:

1. If there is a problem, we look for a solution
2. If there is a better way, we find it
3. If our teammate needs help, we give it
4. If we need help, we ask

The school’s mantra: Work Hard. Be Kind

Is your company or organization this together in its mission? I know a group of kids in San Diego who can probably teach you a few great things, if you have time to check out their next assembly or musical performance.

What’s your company or organization’s story? How do you tell it?

Messaging is part art and science. It takes a strong gut sense to move a group messaging session to completion — especially in the early phase of a company when stakes feel so much higher. Will we nail it? Are we over-reaching? Is it clear? Can it be better?

It almost always can be. Messaging is human. And it can change over time.

One of my favorite press release boilerplates:

About Cisco

Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO), is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Cisco news and information are available at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

No discussion of routers, switches or VoIP. Pretty simple, elegant and direct with links for loads of announcements.

Now, it could be argued that “networking” is too broad (think social networks), and that connecting, communicating and collaborating can be done many ways.

But that’s the point: it can with Cisco gear.

The message police at Cisco made it simple. A good thing.