Another self-plug: I have a campaign piece in the latest issue of Nieman Reports, which features many interesting takes on campaigning in the Internet age. I tried to take an Olympian view of the whole thing, with the (perhaps foolish) idea of straddling the old-new media divide. But what struck me most writing it, and looking over the other pieces, is how little has changed despite the rapid evolution in technology and audience behavior, the collapse of the print media business model, and the exponential growth of alternative online voices and techniques.

In other words, the feeding frenzy still rules. In the age of Drudge and cable talkathons, the phenomenon has grown and become ever more trivial since the days of Gary Hart and Bill Clinton. And it is still at its core primarily an old-media phenomenon. It is the dream of every member of the “Gang of 500″ to set off some trivial controversy that dominates the news cycle for days. This year’s serial outrages – campaigns taking offense at anything and everything – are part of this too.

Even the new media, which is supposed to be smarter than that, tries exploit this dynamic. TPM has a story up on how John McCain was asked if he thought Obama was an extremist or a socialist (he was not asked if he thought Obama was a Muslim or when he had stopped beating his wife). McCain clearly didn’t know how to answer this, so fumbled through, tacitly buying into both the extremist and socialist ideas. I find it hard to get angry about stuff like this, not least of all because the purpose of playing this up isn’t genuine outrage, but to create tinder for a feeding frenzy that hurts McCain.

This is a perfectly understandable reaction to the conservative media’s success at hyping ridiculous, minor incidents into feeding frenzies. But ginning up more feeding frenzies in response is no solution.