Thursday, November 18, 2004
Why Old Media Is The Way It Is
I was reading the letters to the editor column of the Wall Street Journal this morning. There were many responses to the remarks of William Baker, president of New York Public Television, which were published in the Journal a few days ago.
Mr. Baker had posited that public media (e.g., NPR and PBS) are the natural replacement of the Old Media (e.g., the New York Times and the three major broadcast TV networks) as the primary source of unbiased news and "quiet, thoughtful, non-partisan" programming. The readers whose responses the Journal printed were, um, unconvinced. But I digress.
It occurred to me that a major reason the Old Media ("Established Media" "Entrenched Media") are the way they are is inbreeding. Journalists from Old Media lecture and teach at journalism schools, thereby inculcating in their students the lore and customs of the Old Media. Since many journalism majors are attracted to the field because they dream of being the next Bob Woodward or Walter Cronkite, they already lean to the left at the outset, at least a little bit. J-school reinforces these leanings.
Upon graduation, these students are absorbed into a culture that overwhelmingly identifies with the political left. People tend to do what it takes to get along at the office, so any young journalist who might think differently soon learns to keep his/her opinions under wraps. Journalism, like most professions, has its own subculture; the subculture of American Old Media journalism has as its right wing the political center, and as its left wing the left end of European socialism. A journalist cannot help but be influenced by the total immersion in such an environment. Thus the journalism subculture perpetuates itself, reinforcing its own unrecognized biases.
The result of this intellectual inbreeding is similar to what is seen in inbred biological organisms. Defects begin to emerge, such as blindness, deafness and inability to adapt. Some of these defects actually improve the chances of survival and reproduction within the group, but the group as a whole becomes more and more separate from its species, and becomes less able to adapt to changing conditions. The group is just fine as long as its own environment is undisturbed, but any disruption of that environment can be catastrophic.
What we have seen in this election cycle just completed is a major disruption of the environment in which Old Media have existed for decades. The blogosphere consists of hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, each with his or her own interests, viewpoint and area of expertise, and each of those bloggers is an activist -- nobody forces anyone to start a blog.
When Old Media publishes something that touches upon a blogger's area of interest, the blogger comments on it. If the media story is wrong, a blogger with expertise in the area will debunk it. And because the blogosphere is so widespread and interconnected, the information will be disseminated almost with the speed of light. The CBS memo debacle is a perfect example of the phenomenon. Within 14 hours after CBS posted the forged memos on its website, bloggers with credible expertise had demonstrated that they were fakes and had duplicated them, thus demonstrating how they were faked. Not much later, bloggers demonstrated why the memos couldn't have been created when they were purported to have been.
So far Old Media haven't adapted well to the environmental changes created by the emergence of the blogosphere. Mostly the reaction has been a mixture of whining, disparagement and attempted bullying in an effort to make the bloggers go away. Won't work -- too many bloggers with too many talents. Some members of Old Media will eventually realize this and adapt. Those who don't will become extinct -- eaten alive, not by bloggers but by upstart competitors who "get it." Those competitors will make sure that they bring in viewpoints and expertise from outside the journalism establishment, and more importantly, put people with those other viewpoints and expertise in editorial positions. In the long run, the journalism profession and society as a whole will be the better for it all, but in the short term journalism will be an uncomfortable place for the Old Media honchos.
Mr. Baker had posited that public media (e.g., NPR and PBS) are the natural replacement of the Old Media (e.g., the New York Times and the three major broadcast TV networks) as the primary source of unbiased news and "quiet, thoughtful, non-partisan" programming. The readers whose responses the Journal printed were, um, unconvinced. But I digress.
It occurred to me that a major reason the Old Media ("Established Media" "Entrenched Media") are the way they are is inbreeding. Journalists from Old Media lecture and teach at journalism schools, thereby inculcating in their students the lore and customs of the Old Media. Since many journalism majors are attracted to the field because they dream of being the next Bob Woodward or Walter Cronkite, they already lean to the left at the outset, at least a little bit. J-school reinforces these leanings.
Upon graduation, these students are absorbed into a culture that overwhelmingly identifies with the political left. People tend to do what it takes to get along at the office, so any young journalist who might think differently soon learns to keep his/her opinions under wraps. Journalism, like most professions, has its own subculture; the subculture of American Old Media journalism has as its right wing the political center, and as its left wing the left end of European socialism. A journalist cannot help but be influenced by the total immersion in such an environment. Thus the journalism subculture perpetuates itself, reinforcing its own unrecognized biases.
The result of this intellectual inbreeding is similar to what is seen in inbred biological organisms. Defects begin to emerge, such as blindness, deafness and inability to adapt. Some of these defects actually improve the chances of survival and reproduction within the group, but the group as a whole becomes more and more separate from its species, and becomes less able to adapt to changing conditions. The group is just fine as long as its own environment is undisturbed, but any disruption of that environment can be catastrophic.
What we have seen in this election cycle just completed is a major disruption of the environment in which Old Media have existed for decades. The blogosphere consists of hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, each with his or her own interests, viewpoint and area of expertise, and each of those bloggers is an activist -- nobody forces anyone to start a blog.
When Old Media publishes something that touches upon a blogger's area of interest, the blogger comments on it. If the media story is wrong, a blogger with expertise in the area will debunk it. And because the blogosphere is so widespread and interconnected, the information will be disseminated almost with the speed of light. The CBS memo debacle is a perfect example of the phenomenon. Within 14 hours after CBS posted the forged memos on its website, bloggers with credible expertise had demonstrated that they were fakes and had duplicated them, thus demonstrating how they were faked. Not much later, bloggers demonstrated why the memos couldn't have been created when they were purported to have been.
So far Old Media haven't adapted well to the environmental changes created by the emergence of the blogosphere. Mostly the reaction has been a mixture of whining, disparagement and attempted bullying in an effort to make the bloggers go away. Won't work -- too many bloggers with too many talents. Some members of Old Media will eventually realize this and adapt. Those who don't will become extinct -- eaten alive, not by bloggers but by upstart competitors who "get it." Those competitors will make sure that they bring in viewpoints and expertise from outside the journalism establishment, and more importantly, put people with those other viewpoints and expertise in editorial positions. In the long run, the journalism profession and society as a whole will be the better for it all, but in the short term journalism will be an uncomfortable place for the Old Media honchos.
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