News in the Time of Twitter

I was talking to a friend this afternoon, discussing the future of print newspapers (really!). I suggested that print news will be significantly pared down, much in the same way that radio was, from a daily (or two) for each town of moderate size to perhaps only one for each major city and none for smaller markets, save for independent, “boutique” papers. He had an interesting take on it: He noted that many of the technologies that were first tried during the first internet bubble didn’t “take,” only to catch hold in this one. Likewise, he posited that some that haven’t quite caught on this round – namely, podcasting – might take off the next time around. His theory, and an intriguing one at that, is that the major news “brands” – NYT, WaPo, etc. – will make most of their money by aggregating those individual news sources into, for lack of a better analogy, channels. In other words, individuals would upload breaking content from their locations to their podcasts (much in the same way that people Twitter), and the best of the best would be collected and promoted under the NYT channel, leveraging the brand recognition. Then, much like Digg, the most viewed stories would be followed and reported on in-depth by staff reporters.

It’s a way of giving the people what they want, and they news they’re interested in, and focusing limited resources in that direction.

I found his speculation on the subject fascinating. It all seems awfully likely, what with MSN/MSNBC’s Hulu taking off like a rocket…

We’ll see, I suppose.

Cheers!

Do Traditional Newspapers Need to Survive?

Short answer: “Yes.”

Newspapers – inky, dirty, tree-using newspapers – do need to survive, despite all the things that make them seem obsolete. In fact, their obsolescence is exactly their hook. Take, for example, radio. Radio was expected to be wiped out entirely by television. It wasn’t. Online streaming took another shot, but radio kept on ticking. Why?

Well, for one thing, it provided something that was incredibly accessible. With the upcoming shift to digital television, not even broadcast tv will be available over the air to anyone with the most basic of equipment anymore. If you can’t afford cable, have an old tv, and didn’t get a handy dandy government coupon, you’re about to be aced out of the tv market. But all you need is a radio – any radio, be it attached to a 70-year-old record player or a new Porsche – and an electrical current and you can get the latest news, music, entertainment, and commentary over your radio dial. When the power goes out and there’s an emergency… Well, they don’t sell emergency hand crank powered televisions, but such radios are in many a home emergency kit.

Likewise, newspapers offer not just a hard copy of the day’s events, but one that can be used regardless of computer literacy, electricity, battery power, etc. The mere fact that newspapers require absolutely no special equipment will be their saving grace. They will have a tough time, though, much as radio did, in transitioning from dominant media force to alternative, “back-up” source.

Cheers!

You Can't Line a Trunk with HTML

300 years of newspapers in this country, give or take a few, and I get to try to answer the question “what’s the historic value of newspapers?”

Good grief.

Historically speaking, of course, newspapers were the wellspring of community and national unity for the centuries before tv, radio and the internet became commonplace. Common reading material lead to common knowledge and then to common opinion, and as such, newspapers really shaped the nation. Additionally, hard copy newspapers are today invaluable windows into history – How often do we hear of someone renovating his living room to find his walls stuffed with newspapers trumpeting Lincoln’s shocking 1864 upset or some other such historical episode? Forgotten insights are recovered; we are reminded of public opinion of the time, and history takes on new contexts. Nobody’s ever going to find a website tucked away in an attic telling them a hundred years from now how Americans felt about the dearth of port-o-johns at the inauguration.

Cheers!

Beating a Dead Elephant

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/14/palin.persistent/

Is it just me, or does it seem rather beneath an ostensibly serious politician to harp continually on the premise that her image was somehow both created and distorted by the media at large? If you blacked out the names and one or two details, I’ll bet you a steak dinner that you couldn’t tell whether the complainant was Gov. Palin or Omarosa.

(On a non-media related note, I must interject here and say that this whole Palin situation is surreal. I feel like her mother. It’s like I, via my vote, had to sit her down and say that blaming absolutely everybody but yourself for your failures is not demonstrating the kind of maturity that I am comfortable trusting. Her retort, amazingly (if predictably) enough, actually is “I’ll act like an adult when you start treating me like one.” The woman has five children – Wouldn’t you think she’d recognize that that’s just not how it works? Good grief!)

Fairly or not, Sen. McCain learned the hard way that playing to the base on this issue is a bad idea. He bit the hand that fed him, going in short order from being a media darling, a favorite guest of Jon Stewart and other über-lefties for his distaste for Pres. Bush (both on a personal level and even occasionally in terms of policy), to being a favorite target.

In McCain’s case, this was an example of “live by the sword, die by the sword,” having reached his level of prominence and national recognition (to say nothing of favorable impression) by successfully playing the media game. By trying to play the “media card” to win over a lukewarm base, he signed his own metaphorical death warrant. Palin could learn a thing or two from that flameout, but she seems determined as ever to avoid any kind of learning.

Must be that pesky base. The Barracuda knows: they don’t much care for that learnin’.

William Buckley, how thou (and thy sesquipedalian contributions) art missed...

Cheers!

Screwed

So, I’ve been thinking. If the commercialization, slipping standards, et al. of the media are as rampant as they seem, then incidental benefits aside, there ought to be a way to fix that. Problems are for solving, right?

Well, if there’s a problem that hasn’t been solved, you can bet it’s not because the solution is a piece of cake. The issue with our media, as best I can tell, is at heart a collective character flaw.

Not just with those creating, but – maybe even more so – with us. The consumers.

Media is much like nutrition. Despite the fact that we all know better, there’s a continuing demand for junk food. Nutritionally void, useless “food” sells in unparalleled quantity and for pennies, while healthy produce skyrockets in price and sits untouched on the shelves. Chain stores like TGIFriday’s and Applebee’s try again and again to add healthier options to their menus to accommodate a vocal contingent who plead for it, only to remove these items soon afterwards because they simply don’t sell.

Likewise, we’ve adopted an “I don’t hear you, la la la” attitude towards the ever more undeniable shortcomings of our media. Partisans read their publications (The New Republic vs. National Review, etc.), watch their networks (MSNBC vs. Fox News), and avoid at all costs considering opposing viewpoints. Tailoring their content to satisfy their consumers, these media skew stories and omit facts – It’s a slippery and predictable slope. We want our news fast, tasty, and appealingly packaged. News becomes "news."

So what’s to be done? Should all media be non-profit? In the hands of donors? The number of sources would be decimated, and, by virtue of being funded by a group of people with at least a substantial number of similar values (se also: PBS, NPR), the content would invariably still skew towards their preferences.

The only way I can see around this is for people to begin to patronize outlets that provide extra-dry, unbiased content. We consumers would have to step outside our comfort zone and demand, as one, that people stop telling us what we want to hear and start telling it like it is.

Yeah, we’re in big trouble, I think.

Cheers!

What's the Problem?

“What is the media’s biggest problem?”

Well, geez, syllabus, don’t open a can of worms or anything…

I suppose one’s idea of what constitutes the media’s biggest problem is particularly dependent on whether media are things you primarily consume, or things you primarily create.

Check it: I have to think that if I were a reporter, say, for the Seattle Times, I’d be well convinced that the biggest problem facing my given medium was a declining revenue base, a dwindling interest in traditional media, etc. Were I a site manager/editor for Newsweek.com, I suppose my idea of the biggest problem facing “the media” was how to make my online presence profitable in order to keep paying my reporters and so forth. As it stands, I’m a media consumer, not a pro, and thus I’m having a hard time pinpointing the “biggest problem.” I recognize that most people would probably say something along the lines of “commercialization” or “lack of ethics and overabundance of bias,” but while I’m not fond of either of those things, I’m not altogether convinced they’re without their upsides.

Follow me, here.

It seems to me that the commercialization and bias of most mainstream media, combined with the unprecedented access to information consumers enjoy today, there is an equally unprecedented onus on individuals to do their own due diligence on their garnered information. Now, I’m not saying that this doesn’t lead – and, in fact, hasn’t led, in sometimes incredibly public and embarrassing instances – to the spread of misinformation and so on, but it’s also led to an increase in the awareness of most people to their own responsibility to vet their own information instead of mindlessly consuming what’s presented.

I’m not saying that the corruption of the media is a good thing. But it’s not without its benefits, either.

Food for thought, perhaps.

Cheers!

How to Save Traditional Newspapers

Today was Sunday. When I got to work I followed my usual routine – I grabbed the paper and started carving it up. I took what I always take: Opinion, Life & Arts (for the crossword puzzles, mainly), and the comics.

After having read the opinion pages, finished my puzzles, and caught up with Frazz, I started thinking about why it was that a self-proclaimed “news junkie” like me didn’t lunge immediately for the front page. As it happened, I had looked it over briefly – and saw nothing I hadn’t already seen that morning on my habitual perusal of the web – MSNBC.com, King5.com, Newsweek.com, et al.

While I am something of a traditionalist and don’t mean to in any way belittle the special feeling of snapping open a paper – getting one’s hands dirty, both literally and figuratively, in pursuit of the latest – it does occur to me that what I’m reading there anymore isn’t very often the… well, latest. I don’t think there’s any way to fix this, really – As best I can tell, the future of the traditional print newspapers rests with people like me, who just enjoy the sort of ceremony and ritual that comes with reading the paper.

After all this pondering, it should be noted, I went back and read the whole thing (save some of the more boring bits). Maybe the papers will survive not by virtue of a love of tradition but by an overdeveloped sense of guilt.

Cheers!