Mainstream Media is in its Death Throes
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The so-called mainstream media, once defined as the New York Times,
the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the
Wall Street Journal and the three major network TV stations, no longer
have a monopoly on the opinion making process in American life.
Why belabor the obvious? We all know why. Eyeballs are migrating to
the Internet, that vast endless, timeless cloud of information that
assaults us 24/7 from every corner of the globe. When eyeballs
migrate, the money as defined by the advertisers migrates with them.
The less eyeballs, the less revenue, the less revenue, the less
investment by the media.
When the revenue decline reaches the tipping point, money dries up,
shrinkage occurs until there is nothing left to shrink and the media
entity dies or morphs into something else. That is what is happening
now. The old media is dying. The new media is building on the corpse
of the old media and it is too early to tell if the business paradigm
for the new media will ever prosper. It might even die faster than the
old media.
Television and radio has split its audience into tiny pieces. There
are now hundreds of television channels and thousands of radio
channels, and gazillion channels on the Internet. The Tower of Babel
now extends into infinity.
Mainstream journalists, many of them now in save-the-world mode (ever
since Watergate made celebrities out of investigative journalists)
truly believe that we are losing our ability to prod the government
into transparency, to uncover corruption and generally serve the
public good. Thus, they contend, that the resources to expose the sins
of government are drying up, splintering, becoming less effective.
They have a point.
The new media now on the Internet e.g., the Huffington Post, the Daily
Beast, Politico and on and on believe that they will fill the gap and
become, if not what was once known as the mainstream media, the go-to
media. Maybe. Politico is now morphing back into print with a local
angle news sheet. They had better have deep pockets.
Those of us who grew up with the traditional mainstream media have, to
say the least, mixed feelings about its demise. With fewer outlets we
were more like a family, more connected. We knew what each outlet
stood for. The public conversation was limited by comparison with
today, but comforting since those of us who cared could embrace the
information flow. We thought we were getting all sides of all
arguments, that our press and speech freedoms were secure. We probably
were. Sooner or later, corrupt politicians were exposed by the press
and many removed or incarcerated. It amazes me that one crop of crooks
are quickly replaced by another crop.
In New York when I was growing up there were eleven dailies. Now,
there are three and who knows how long they will survive?
Were we unduly influenced by those who controlled the media? I’m not
sure, since the line between the business side of the press and the
news side seemed like a pretty wide chasm. Economic desperation may be
diluting that ethic. Ideological lines have blurred and the media
appears to manipulate its content and layout to favor the particular
bent of its sixties influenced editors and reporters. Their nostalgic
output seems a lot less subtle than it used to be.
As an ex-newspaperman, I know that editorial placement, headline
writing, and the way stories are constructed by length and detail, can
make spin often hard to spot. As a former practitioner both as editor
and reporter, I can spot a bent story at a hundred paces. On the Net,
the same process holds, but usually we know the ideological zone
upfront.
In today’s media environment a few big public companies actually
control a vast array of competing media. When one conglomerate owns a
big basket of unruly entities, it is difficult to get them all to
dance to the same tune. Besides, it doesn’t really matter to the
operators. Their principal objective is revenue and profit. By and
large, they are not selling ideology. They are selling eyeballs and
ears. The more they deliver, the more they can charge advertisers.
That’s business, and the business of business is business. If it
sounds crass, it is.
So far, the migration of the mainstream traditional media to the Net
has been a rocky road. It is also a rocky road for the so-called new
media e.g. Politico, Huffington, and many others. I’m sure they’re
credible but I’m not certain that they have as much influence as they
claim. They, like many of their on-line competitors are still in start-
up mode and have not yet reached a sustained profit, without which
they will eventually fold or become something else.
An exception is the Wall Street Journal, which has paid subscribers on
the Net, a lucky early choice with its mostly upscale target base. But
most of the on-line media is free and dependent on advertising. I’m
still uncertain, despite the hype, whether the advertising is paying
off. In other words, everything on the Net that is defined as media
e.g. the news business, and other forms of information peddling is
still up for grabs.
Of one thing I am absolutely certain. Everything, not only media, is
changing. And I do mean everything; delivery systems, marketing,
content, medicine, the whole ball of wax. No sooner than we think we
have it in our grasp then it moves somewhere else with the speed of
light, perhaps faster. Everything that is, perhaps even what is
commonly known as human nature.
The center is not holding because there is no center. Marshall McLuhan
was spot on. The media have become the message. Google has proved the
point. It and its copiers are swiftly becoming the media.
I suppose the trick will be how to keep up. Even this attempt at
analysis will be obsolete the moment it is written. Remember that
play: Stop the World- I Want To Get Off.
Forget it. It’s spinning too fast. It’s making me dizzy.
How about you?