FOR most of us, the music career got little further than the shower head or hairbrush. The braver may have tried to tape their early singing efforts, before consigning the recordings to the loft. Few, of course, want to listen to the outpourings of the tone deaf, but, perhaps, in the dusty tapes lay talent that was never discovered.

That notion, though, seems so last century. In the Pop Idol/X Factor era, where the pursuit of celebrity has become the first choice of the young, there are endless opportunities to discover new talent — which as the televised singing contests demonstrate, are actually more commercially effective than the old model of finding a bunch of good-looking people and hoping that they can mime.

But even television is a blunt instrument in the internet era. Pomme and Kelly are two Dutch teenagers who have achieved fame on the web through their lip-synching. The duo won the first Google Idol contest in April with a highly entertaining version of Aretha Franklin’s Respect (watch it on pommekelly.com), and if they haven’t been discovered already, a broadcaster or record company can get a first impression without even getting out of the office chair.

If ITV had a smart web strategy, it would be to run its own web-based talent competition. But in a world where so much advantage goes to the first mover, Google Idol (a fan site, no relation to Google), has become a leader in lip-synching talent contests. The format is simple: videos are placed head to head, with the public voting until a winner emerges.

Such is the urge to self- publish among the under 24s that it cannot be long before it becomes the best way to launch yourself on to the showbiz world (so much for Cambridge University’s Footlights). Over in America, Brooke Brodack — a 20-year-old receptionist — has already been signed to a production company owned by Carson Daly, the NBC host. Brookers, as she is known, won cult viewers with her intense expression and messy hair, and as her fame has grown, one of her home videos, Everything Changes, has been viewed over a million times on YouTube.

It is conventional at this point to assume that this sudden outpouring of user- generated content will signal the end of the broadcaster, and the music company and maybe modern life too. The thinking has created the kind of climate where MySpace, owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times, reckons it can become a record company, although it may take a while to catch up with Universal’s massive market share.

Yet, in truth, the relationship between old and new media is more complementary than that. Not only does YouTube, or Google Video, act as a talent warehouse, but look at what’s popular, and once you get past the Zidane headbutts, you’ll find established media companies exploiting the video search sites to promote talent. On Google Video’s top 100, David Hasselhoff’s new video, Jump in My Car, is ranked No 3, helped by some online promotion from his record company, Sony BMG. It would be nice, though, as the future and the past intertwine, if the quality of songs could improve.

• IT’S hard to argue that media coverage is as important as war reporting, but how newspapers and broadcasters cover themselves and their industry should be used as a benchmark by readers and viewers. If internal pressures create obviously skewed media coverage, then it can create an impression that other coverage can come under similar pressure too.

  It is for readers, intelligent enough to spot rubbish when it is offered up, to judge how well The Times does this, although few readers will be unaware of the extent of the interests of the parent company. In addition, the way self-regulation works in the newspaper industry, competitors are free to come to their own view, criticising where they deem appropriate.

  Caveat aside, it was surprising to see The Daily Telegraph attack The Independent this week. As Roy Greenslade pointed out in the Evening Standard, this seems to come from the top — Murdoch MacLennan, the Telegraph’s chief executive, who is known to be unhappy about repeated criticisms from The Independent’s media columnist, Stephen Glover. More critical articles were planned, too, but MacLennan personally ordered a halt after talking to The Independent’s executives.

  If the articles about The Independent were worth publishing in the Telegraph, they should continue; if not why did they appear at all? As for The Independent, it needs to work out whether it is justifiable to do something about Stephen Glover. But what a lot of fuss about something not very important.

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