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Recently, the story of the loss, rescue and recovery of the Kim Family has captured my attention, though I haven't blogged about it.  Partly because I didn't know what to say.  I remember watching James Kim on TechTV and occasionally seeing him or reading him on CNet, but he wasn't a big figure in my awareness.  And yet, I found myself constantly checking for the latest news, hoping and praying that Kim, his wife Katie and their two kids would be found safely.  Judging by the attention the story received on digg.com and all over the internet, I wasn't alone.  (SFGate.com is reporting that the Kim story received 1 million page views in the 90 minutes following the announcement that Kim's body had been found, their own website was getting 3,300 page views per minute.)  So the question is, why?

Some, like SFGate suggest that this is due mainly to the fact that people felt that it could have been them in that car, lost in the snow.  That may be true to a point, but I also think that it has something to do with who James Kim was. 

James was a minor celebrity at best, but more to the point, he was a member of the tech community and I think that's what made the story much more personal.  There is a strata of tech and culture journalists like Kim that exist between the Tom Brokaws and Anderson Coopers of the world and us peons.  They are not as "professional" as the hard-core newsies.  Don't get me wrong, the information that people like Kim and icons of the genre such as Leo Laporte put out is just as good or better that what you'll get from the mainstream press, but tech journalism has always exemplified the tech culture. They have been the first to embrace the social news phenomenon.  They don't wear ties and scowl at you from behind a desk, instead they wear jeans and laugh and let you know how things are. 

The "new media" culture — which TechTV, TWiT and CNet are perfect examples of — really connects with consumers.  We don't feel like these people are talking AT us, they are talking to us, with us, in many cases using the same humor and language that we use when we talk to our friends.  They tell us things and they welcome it when we tell them things.  So when one of these friends is involved in something like this, it's more personal to us.

Blake Ross, a co-founder of Firefox, has another view of why this was so important. Ross says

This tragedy engulfed me because over the past 7 days I got to know the Kim family, not “know” as “a missing family” or “some traveling tourists,” but know. I watched James’ videos, toured Kati’s boutiques and trespassed on their lives. I read the comments of c|net colleagues. I watched the rescue efforts in real time, and my hope ebbed and flowed with the discoveries of pants and people. I bonded with the family on my own time and endured their heartbreak with thousands of others. A two-minute television flyover, sandwiched between an Iraq report and a Taco Bell recall, cannot offer that.

And that's an amazing point as well.  James, because of his tech involvement, had digital photos, videos, podcasts and much of his life available online.  One click and you could see a video of James talking about what he was going to get his kids for Christmas this year.  That's personal.  On the TV or radio, the pressures of programming mean that a story like Kim's can get only a few moments of attention, but on the web we can (in Blake's words) discover the humanity of the family "on [our] own time". 

So all of you who think the tech world is a bunch of heartless script kiddies who are obsessed with Bit Torrent and MySpace vanity, you're proven wrong.  The top story of the last month on digg is the finding of James' body with almost twelve THOUSAND diggs and the number two story is the finding of Katie and the kids with about 6500.  The next closest story comes in at just over four thousand.

The world isn't getting more disconnected by technology, quite the opposite.  So long, James.