Today, National Public Radio (NPR) became the latest media group to join Tumblr, and I spoke with senior strategist Andy Carvin to find out how the organization plans to leverage the quickly growing platform.

"Part of what we do is experiment on different platforms, and it seemed apparent to us that there was a sizable number of NPR fans on Tumblr," he says. "It's less about pageviews and more about engaging a community that enjoys NPR."

Carvin says NPR is taking a very experimental approach to Tumblr in terms of curating content to share, engaging one-on-one with followers and determining how to voice the blog. He adds that he is eager to get feedback from fans, but that there is no "grand plan" for what they intend to accomplish.

Tumblr and the Media

By joining Tumblr, NPR also joins a growing list of traditional media outlets - including Newsweek, Life Magazine and Rolling Stone - attempting to reach fans on the popular service. But why is Tumblr such an attractive new medium for these organizations? Carvin says it's all in the visuals.

"Tumblr is a visual medium. Photos and snippets of quotes really stand out, while Facebook might have a sentence or two in a wall post and thumbnail with a link to a story," he says.

Why not use Posterous? "Who's to say we won't," Carvin says.

He believes Tumblr has attracted a media presence because of the ease at which a variety of media can be quickly presented on a site. It's this established media presence that led NPR to chose Tumblr over Posterous, at least for now.

"It's important to pick and choose your battles. It's easy to overextend yourself on every single platform rather than figure out sweet spots," he says. "We recognize that there's a large group of people online that love what we do [...] It's important for us to stay engaged with these folks at a personal level and not just a 50,000 foot level."

Newsweek has been struggling financially and The Washington Post Company sold the magazine for a small fee and its debt in August. The buyer was Sidney Harman, a businessman and philanthropist.

But some of Newsweek's old media veterans are finding a place in the new media world. Mark Coatney, a senior editor and manager of Newsweek's social media presence on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, was one of Newsweek's more high-profile staffers to leave.

The Newsweek Tumblr was praised for its conversational tone and quickly gained a following. But Coatney left Newsweek around the time of the sale to take a position at... Tumblr. He's now their media liaison, working with publications to make their content social (see Newsweek Editor Jumps Ship to New, New Media; Joins Tumblr).

Fineman said he decided to go to The Huffington Post because the Web is "where the action is." "The chance to dive headlong into the future is one that I don't think anyone could pass up," he told The New York Times Media Decoder blog.

Sounds like a major change for a career reporter at a weekly glossy to suddenly find himself at an online-only publication. The hire is also a bit of a breach for The Huffington Post, which relies on a younger staff and unpaid guest bloggers. But cross-pollination between new and old media is something we're starting to see more of as bloggers get hired at newspapers, newspaper reporters get hired at blogs and bloggers get called on during White House press briefings.

Now, Tumblr has made is easy for users to add attribution metadata to posts just as they would tags and other information. This is great for users who want to credit where they found an interesting photo, quote or article, but this feature is a huge benefit to publishers.

As we mentioned earlier this summer, many popular publishers - including Newsweek, Huffington Post and The New Yorker - have flocked to Tumblr to share content in a new way. With this new attribution feature, they can rest assured that their content will be properly attributed as it is shared throughout the community.

This kind of publisher-friendly feature is likely a direct result of Tumblr's latest talent grab, Mark Coatney, formerly an editor at Newsweek. Coatney's new position is to serve as a liaison between Tumblr and media publications who want to leverage the platform, so it's likely Tumblr will continue to add features that will make publishers happy.

Coatney's new position will be to be a liaison for other media publications that want to extend their reach on Tumblr the way companies like Newsweek, The New Yorker and The New York Times have. His philosophy is that editors should not simply be shameless self-promoters, but should instead leverage these various platforms to engage with their communities at the personal level.

The move to Tumblr is a clear sign that the micro-blogging service is very interested in helping traditional media find a new voice online. For Coatney, this isn't the first time he's shifted gears in his media career. Before joining Newsweek, he worked as a writer and editor for Time Magazine, where he also helped to create the first iteration of Time.com.

What's the new trend among legacy media? Why it's none other than Tumblr.

As noted in a Business Insider article Friday, several outlets of traditional print media (newspapers and magazines) are suddenly popping up all over Tumblr with their own pages. Newsweek seems to making great use of the platform by posting mainly photos, and quotes - two of the most shared forms of media on Tumblr. The New Yorker also recently joined the service, sharing mainly videos and photos, including high-resolution images of their popular artistic covers.

The venerable New York Times has even jumped in the mix, though its account is so far empty, save for a single post announcing more content is "coming soon." The Business Insider article lists several other traditional media outlets providing sharable content with fans on Tumblr, including Life Magazine, The Travel Channel, The Today Show, Elle, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and several others.

If anything, these new additions to the Tumblr ecosystem provide a human face through which the various outlets can communicate more freely with their readers. Newsweek has been discussing rumors about its impending purchase on the Tumblr, and many of the sites seem perfectly content with posting material would think would be found objectionable on the main homepage or in print.

So is Tumblr the next big thing for traditional media outlets? From the looks of it, the large media outlets seem pleased with the service and the kinds of interactions it allows for. It would not be surprising to see Tumblr become the third common place aside Facebook and Twitter for media organizations and corporate brands to further reach their audiences.

CNN Election Center 2008

In our opinion, CNN has by far the slickest and easiest to navigate election site out of all the major mainstream news media sources. They have a well designed, easy to navigate, and clearly laid out page that puts a wealth of information at your fingertips, including live election results, delegate counts, entrance and exit polls, candidate overviews, money charts, and general election info. If you're looking for just the straight state-by-state results, USA Today does a great job.

Politweets

Politweets is our favorite Twitter politics mashup. Last month we said that, "For political junkies, Politweet will be a must monitor web-site on every primary date this season until we know who the candidates for the general election are." Assuming Twitter can keep the lights on, Politweets will again be a must watch site throughout the day. Also check out the SuperTuesday Twitter stream from the Virtual Vantage Points blog.

Google Super Tuesday Map

In an effort to make sure Twitter goes down, Google has also teamed up with the service to create a maps mashup that shows Twitter updates about the primaries as they come in from across the country. It will display election results down to the county level after the returns are in, as well. The Google News team also slapped together an election gadget so you can embed state-by-state results on your web page.

YouTube YouChoose Super Tuesday

YouTube has a Google Maps mashup of their own that will aggregate and post geolocated videos throughout the day from candidates, news organizations, and YouTubers. The coverage isn't really restricted to Super Tuesday states, but it is still worth checking out -- many times the citizen journalist view is clearer than the one you get via mainstream sources.

MTV Choose or Lose Street Team

Speaking of citizen journalism, MTV's Street Team has citizen journalists dispatched to 23 Super Tuesday states to upload live and recorded mobile videos and blog posts throughout the day (absent is a representative from West Virginia, whose primary is actually May 13 -- the Republican party is awarding some delegates today via a statewide convention, however). Last week we called MTV's online election coverage a coup for citizen journalism.

Newsweek Live Webcast: Inside Super Tuesday

If mainstream journalism is more your thing, then Newsweek has you covered on the web. The magazine, along with owner the Wasington Post, is trotting out the heavy hitters for six continuous hours of live streaming web video coverage. Bob Woodward, Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn, Howard Kurtz, and Leonard Downie will participate, with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham anchoring from Washingtonpost.com's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. WaPo and Newsweek reporters Michael Isikoff, Howard Fineman, Jonathan Alter, and others, including those from online magazine Slate, will contribute reports throughout the evening. Newsweek's operation is aiming to bring the name appeal and polish of broadcast news to the web. We'll see if it works.

Memeorandum

From the maker of Techmeme, Gabe Rivera's political memetracker keeps a pulse on the political blogosphere. It's a safe bet everyone will be buzzing about Super Tuesday today, but what are the individual storylines that will no doubt permeate the coverage? Following the related and discussion links on Memeorandum will let you find out. For a broader view of what people are talking about on the blogosphere, check out PoliticalTrends.info.