Demi & Cooper Advertising had a very busy 2009. Here’s a look back at our most notable moments. If you’d like to see our past video projects on YouTube, please click here.

Sadly Michael Jackson died last afternoon. Where did people go to find breaking news information?  Far and away the sources were Twitter and TMZ. Twitscoop posted this incredible video of the trending topics cloud.

But wait, wait, wait — before we all talk about the irrelevancy of mainstream media and how most people found out about Michael Jackson dying via Twitter, Facebook (likely because many people let their Twitter accounts update their Facebook status) and TMZ — lets not forget something very important: fact checking.

Fact: Mainstream media indeed is becoming irrelevant as a source for breaking news. However, despite some huge enormous blunders, mainstream media really does a decent job every day of making sure the stories they run are correct. And while early reports of Michael’s death were reported correctly with new media it also could have been a false alarm. Last night Jeff Goldblum was also reported dead (he’s not) and Harrison Ford had been lost at sea (he is not) and earlier this week that Patrick Swayze passed away (not yet). Those stories didn’t go far though. It is the mainstream media outlets that help the smart people who use social media to cull out rumors from garbage.

It seems like there are two camps, and I sit squarely in the middle. In the first camp are those like TechCrunch, who run an excellent blog, but like to self-servingly point out how mainstream media is a bitter and crabby old geezer who needs to defend themselves against their own demise. (Actually, the Chicago Tribune quickly gave themselves a largely unjustified pat-on-the-back by defending their sister paper for doing the “heavy lifting” on the Jackson story yesterday.) Both new media and old are complaining about each other without naming names.

In the second camp are those who almost have to wipe the foam from their mouths as they talk about how they hate new media, calling it at worst dangerous and at best silly.

Personally, I think there is a place for both in this world. We are all currently scrambling to define the roles of each, but the key thing I think everyone should remember is that I don’t think the dust will settle on this for a long, long time. Printed and traditional mainstream media is still extremely valuable. New media and social media serve the purpose of getting breaking news out to many people quicker than anything ever before. It’s all just media, whatever form it comes in and both will continue to evolve for years to come. Let’s all play nice together as best as possible.