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Media Symbiosis: When the Host Dies

Posted by PETE ABEL, Managing Editor in Media.
May 27th, 2008 | Comments

Joe Windish wrote earlier today about the “meltdown” of the broadcast TV industry. Elsewhere, the WaPo’s Howard Kurtz turns in a pre-death obit for newspapers.

Toward the end of his column, Kurtz offers this telling vignette:

The ticking time bomb here is the wholesale abandonment of newspapers by younger people who grew up with a point-and-click mentality. When I was speaking at Harvard recently, a smug graduate student said, “I get everything I need from YouTube. What are you going to do about it?”

“What are you going to do about it?” I shot back. If people want to tune out the news, no one can compel them to change their habits. We can be smarter, faster and jazzier in providing information, but we can’t force-feed the stuff. If newspapers wither and die, it will be in part because the next generation blew us off in favor of Xbox and Wii and full-length movies on their iPods. Network news faces the same erosion. Maybe, in the end, we get the media we deserve.

Granted, some of Kurtz’s argument may be little more than sour grapes, but his larger point survives the most cynical test. Blogs and other new media might offer compelling, man-on-the-street perspectives, but they are (often, if not always) volunteer-driven. As such, new media can rarely afford the time or resources required for focused, in-depth reporting. Instead, new media rely on what is reported elsewhere by conscripted (and paid) journalists. In other words, new media are substantially dependent on a symbiotic relationship, feeding off the scraps of their old-media host. As such, it is in our best interests — those of us who contribute to new media — to likewise contribute what we can to the survival of our host.

Hence, this writer respectfully asks that — if you enjoy the content on this and similar sites — you likewise consider a subscription to a newspaper, and/or news magazine, and/or more frequent viewing of that long-ago abandoned TV news. Their survival … is our survival … is your benefit.

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RememberNovember

You don't need a Masters Degree in Journalism to make a YouTube video. Media itself is becoming watered-down by so called "citizen bloggers"- though there are those who have jumped on the new tech bandwagon who do have a semblance of gravitas and capability. The YouTuber ADHD phenom will lose steam as it drifts towards something else and the kids will go back to their XBox 720'sXX, because there are only so many ways you can tase yourself.

mikkel

The "mainstream media" has completely devolved into gossip and stenography for the most part. There is no critical analysis or effort to separate facts from opinions of the interviewees.

The few good investigative pieces are immediately attacked as signs of "political bias" even though most of the time they are some of the only examples of reporting the full story. I'd say that polarization of society has been the biggest toll on the media, since it feels to them like if they do anything other than "he said/she said" or frivolities then people get very angry.

The youngsters have little to do with the problem. As Glenn Greenwald just pointed out, the media is the least trusted institution. Youtube et al. is popular amongst the younger generation in a large part because of extreme distrust.

The economic problems we're facing now have been in plain view for the last few years and blogs have been following them extensively for that time.

PaulSilver

I can't keep up with the the high quality reporting and commentary on PBS, C-Span, NYT, WSJ, RealClearPolitics, etc.

lurxst

Unfortunately, subscription fees rarely cover anyting more than the cost of getting the paper to your door. Newspapers have always relied on advertising revenue to truly stay afloat.

So as readership declines, so does ad revenue. Now I do tend to read my local papers in their online versions, so hopefully they are getting some sort of money.
I think most of the backlash has more to do with the OP/ED stuff than the actual reporting. As has been stated many times, opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one. With the advent of public media, you can access a lot more a**holes.

RememberNovember

don't forget BBC-America News!

mikkel

And NPR. So three non-profits, a highly specialized paper (stuff in the WSJ outside a few topics tends to be not too good) and an aggregator. Don't you think that the NYT is highly variable in its quality too?

lurxst: I do think it's interesting how our media model supposedly works. Historically, it was highly partisan and most outlets globally have bias and they use it as sales pitches. Ironically, a lot of times I think the moderately-biased international papers do a much better job of covering details because they are trying to make an (often implicit) argument. They are still journalists as they are honest for the most part and report news, so reading a right-leaning British paper and a left-leaning one gives a pretty good overview.

mikkel

Oh yeah, I should probably mention that I think the Christian Science Monitor is the best newspaper there is. It does a great job of not only reporting intricacies but doing it long before the rest of them catch up. Unfortunately they have really cut back in the last few years.

ChrisWWW

The "mainstream media" has completely devolved into gossip and stenography for the most part. There is no critical analysis or effort to separate facts from opinions of the interviewees.

Exactly. Offer something valuable and people might subscribe or tune in. Offer nothing but garbage and gossip and then you have to compete with American Idol and Entertainment Tonight.

runasim

It bothers me that we are just throwing up our hands and sighing at the fact that the young don't like to read.
The young don't like to do chores or homework, either, but there are still some adults around who don't give up or give in on those issues.

If the media, print and TV alike, are in trouble, it's partially because the adults in the room have walked off the stage of responsibility.
I would start with investors, who demand ever higher profits without giving a hoot for how those profits are earned. Apparently they don't care about either minimal standards or quality of contnet, as long as their portfolios grow.

Then there are adults in posession of TV remote controls. As long as the purveyors of fluff and scandal are rewarded by viewership, we don't give them any incentive to change. ,

I don't see any adult leadership, as in assuming repsonsibilty, anywhere. Politicians, and the politically obsessed, love to scream about liberal bias,among reporters without checking on the bias and guiding principles in the boardrooms.

There is no leadership anywhere, just excuses: what the consumer wants, what the market demads,, etc. Marketts and consumer demad are manipulated constantly by savvy messsaging. It takes will. Interest is glaringly absent., not to even speak of will.

Okay, I've vented.
I'm doing my part by selective consumerism and by' messaging' constanly when I speak to my family and friends.. My range is very narrow, though. .

I think we need leaders in this area with real vision and power.
Where are they?

DLS

As I wrote elsewhere -- I don't watch teevee, haven't watched it for ages. What's on it, especially on the major networks?

How many people who are on-line get on Google News or on their favored news sites to any significant degree? What fraction of the on-line community? I suspect it's low.

Many of us can easily hold our own with anyone else on-line and we haven't lost our passion for books and news (and newspapers and news magazines such as the Economist when we're flying and want something to read while seated on an aircraft).

* * *

"Markets and consumer demand are manipulated constantly by savvy messaging"

Actually, it is a myth of the Chomsky-Galbraith-et-cetera crowd that private citizens, the consumers, are helpless automatons who are led to buy what is sold. There indeed is a market, but it is a market that overwhelmingly responds to what people want; it does not direct them. There is innovation, "envelope-pushing," ever more dumbing-down and degeneracy in the programming because what is sordid sells, and the progression of worse and worse garbage you see (this is also true often for many newspapers and magazines like Time Lite, Newspeak, and U.S. Wooze and Knurled Report, which have become tabloid-like and often contemptibly flippant as well as fluffy) is simply a manifestation of...competition.

(The "Race to the Bottom" is a charge made by defenders of government entitlements against any reform or reduction, especially if states and localities properly assume what often is done by the federal government, which such people view as the entitlement agency of choice and strong preference. Often it is shallow emotionalism; the charge, however, has long been true about the media.)

DLS

"the adults in the room have walked off the stage of responsibility"

We're never under any obligation to assume "responsibility." We're not obliged to be consumers at all. We weren't forced to continue to only or nearly only buy U.S. automobiles in California in the 1980s (and later, so much of the rest of the country).

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