When I think of how the Internet is changing the NY media world, I think of a trendy, brand-name coffee shop in an old haunt of mine -- Evanston, Ill. I think of a man there huddled with a bunch of newspapers, intensely focused on what he's doing at that very moment, while few who come in and out of this salon give any thought to this man's name. Meanwhile, I think of all those in New York who know his name, care deeply about what he's doing, but have no idea what he looks like.

I've seen him in the flesh, but to many around here in New York, he's a mythic presence, a man without a face, an invention, perhaps, of all our subliminal notions about ourselves.

Recently, I asked around. My theory was that not only did people know who he was, but they went to his Web site at least ten times a day, the more obsessive of folk, perhaps hitting the refresh button at a staggeringly unhealthy rate. My suspicions were confirmed. My media friends and colleagues around here not only told me they knew who he was, but made it a point of visiting his site before their employer's. These people, sipping coffee of their own, watched HIM, watched him watching THEM, watched, in the end, themselves.

Is this sort of self-reflective behavior a good thing?

Besides logging on to Romenesko's Medianews site, or perhaps this one, there's been a duel phenomenon taking place in NY Mediaville. The question of questions is coming up. An awareness that we're being watched, and a self-loathing of sorts at the fact that it's our own people who are doing it to us.

Shouldn't these reporters be covering something important -- say world hunger or corruption in local politics?

But whether it's media self-absorption that is increasing or media self-awareness (i.e. attention at attention) that is rising, is a tricky issue that few people seem to understand. Thank you, Mr. Romenesko.

Not to be the latest to offer the Internet-is-changing-everything paradigm (and here is where I offer the traditional self-protective caveat squared), but the click-click world is truly changing our notions of self here in the Big Apple. It's easier than ever for readers to shoot off a quick e-mail. Public relations flaks now have Google to toy around with when our names come up. Sites such as Slashdot, Plastic, Metafilter, Arts & Letters and all the other Weblogs and discussion boards Out There, are in some ways, transparent measures of how our words are measured. And finally, sites such as Romenesko's or Inside.com, offer the promise at least of a glimpse into the mind's eye of our closest colleagues and bosses.

All in all, I'm reminded of the scene in Hitchcock's Rear Window when Jimmy Stewart's character suddenly realizes that the murderer he's been watching for weeks across the street is looking his way. What does Stewart do? He rushes to turn off the lights, of course.

But having the Internet is akin to having no on/off switch. No matter how often NY media people gather together at Elaine's for post-supper cappuccino, the ruse is up. The lights are now on, and the traditional watchers must now deal with the discomfort of being the watched.

There's another way the Internet is changing our notions of self-image. The myth of objectivity -- that we aren't watchers but merely scribes accurately reflecting what's going on out there, recording the first draft of history -- is openly being challenged. Hey, when readers only had the opportunity and time to sit down with one daily newspaper per day, they perhaps cared not for challenging one's Word/Truth. As it now has become possible to click through multiple sources on a subject, going to NYTimes.com, then Salon.com, then liberalmediaconspiracy.com, etc., they are now coming to face with the true plurality of the word, 'media'; they now can see for themselves what it means to be offering a 'representation of what happened.'

Notice, also, that next-generation media, a.k.a. new media, tends to be a lot less concerned with hiding their own subjectivity. The appearance of first-person journalistic prose is not something to be lightly shrugged off in the NY Media World. No, in a way, it's the atheist's way of saying Our Church is no longer important.

So when I think of how the Internet is changing the NY Media World, I think of that man in Evanston with his coffee, and how that caffeinated non-face manages to do the most seditious act possible, a motion I'm pretty sure that even he doesn't know the significance of doing: He sees yet another column bemoaning the increased attention the media is paying towards itself, and his reaction is to link his site to it. Oh, that sly Romenesko.

And so now we get to the important issue of this column, the question that media people here have been asking each other in a truly phenomenal meta-media way: Is this sort of self-reflective behavior a good thing?

The answer people give to this question, I've noticed, tends to break down across generation lines. Older media types tend to think 'no, reporters are doing a disservice to their readers by drawing attention away from more important topics.' Younger ones tend to answer differently, a response that I will offer in a second. But before I do, I need to comment on another facet of this generation gap, one which might explain the discrepancy.

The Internet, perhaps for the first time, is offering young reporters, some maybe (gasp) coming to New York for the first time, an open channel to the power of the traditional media elite. In the same way that the Internet's lights have illuminated certain aspects of who we are and what we do, the same way we must deal with the uncomfortable position of not knowing how to turn these lights off, the digital world is now offering to curious, enterprising young journalists, the opportunity to meet the powers that be -- ahem, older media types. E-mail the editor in chief. Find out where he/she eats lunch. Find out who's really in charge at a magazine or T.V newscast. Figure out who's hiring. And so on and so forth.

What any novice confronts when they first get to Manhattan and comes face-to-face with what must seem to them to be an impenetrable wall, but is otherwise known as a media circle, is the notion that a certain structure exists. A structure whose news judgments get told, whose de facto tastes get transmitted. Those looking to assimilate into this culture learn to adopt these behaviors; those outside with no intention of getting in simply complain that the media here is 'liberal,' 'elite,' or at worst, a 'conspiracy.'

Yes, I'm arguing that the NY Media here has an agenda. But not exactly the type that Fox News anchors like to mobilize their viewers against, not the type that screaming Internet denizens encamp to Matt Drudge's Web site to see for themselves. No, this is an unconscious one, a Face-Without-A-Name type that has been rendered visible by the Internet for all to see. It's related to what goes through a young journalist's mind, maybe, when his superiors send him or her out of the office to fulfill the command, 'Go get this story.'

A young journalist's response when he gets to the scene, only to be thought, never spoken, at such an opportunity: 'Why am I here?'

One more thing about Him, that man from Evanston. I knew who he was, but I didn't go up to him. I sipped my coffee and watched from a distance. He looked too intent on what he was doing to actually approach. Really, I didn't want to disturb him.