The NY Times asked seven people with media experience to answer the question, “What would a real new-media debate look like?”

The answers range from the ridiculous…Kevin Kelly:

There is a guy in San Francisco named Justin Kan who broadcasts his daily life on the Web at Justin.tv. He wears a microcamera on his head wherever he goes. He’s always on, both transmitting and receiving. His truth becomes a stream of bits stored, parsed and checked by an ever-expanding web of observers. They keep him honest.
By wearing similar equipment, candidates would embed themselves in the Internet 24/7. The hard questions that inevitably arise from daily interactions with staff members, reporters and the public would provoke “answers” that could be stored, parsed and double-checked by citizen debaters.

To the promising, if it could be done in such a way to screen out nutsy opponents…David All:

The audience should be given a share of the stage with the debate moderator. The millions of voters watching the debate could interrupt, in real time, from the comfort of their homes to help hold the candidates accountable for their answers.
If people thought Hillary Clinton did not answer a question thoroughly, they could text on their cell phones, call the toll-free number on the screen, or vote online to register their dissatisfaction.
And if a majority of the viewers thought she dodged a question or otherwise failed to answer, she would be asked to try again.

But Tom Brokaw’s thoughts show that he really doesn’t take the threat of “new media” to “old media” seriously:

In 1992 someone asked me how I would change the presidential debate format. I proposed handing each of the candidates a double martini in the firm belief that would get them beyond their canned answers.
I think in 2007 we can pair up the martini past and the electronic future. How long would Joe Biden talk on a cellphone after knocking back a big Gibson, straight up?

A Gibson? Kind of shows the demographic the network nightly newscasts are aiming for. And I think the answer to, “how long would Joe Biden talk on a cellphone after knocking back a big Gibson, straight up?” is 183 minutes.