So what is this we’ve become, anyway?
Posted by jimJul 2
We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. – Edward R. Murrow
I’ve been doing this for a while now, this blogging stuff. And I’ve noticed that on occasion we bloggers tend to navel-gaze about what it is we as a media conglomerate are doing here. Because that’s what we have become – we’re a media conglomerate. I hope that makes you feel all corporate and comfy but don’t hold your breath waiting on dividends. I think we are what I like to think of as the bleeding edge of a modern 1776. You see, that’s when people like Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin started doing pamphlets in an effort to inspire the populace to revolt against King George.
We may not be inciting revolution here (although feel free to go ahead with that) but we are changing things. Significant things, and it’s from not just importantbloggers who talk politics, but it’s mommy bloggers as well. We’re creating national conversations and information sharing and we are redefining what modern media is and does and is becoming.
Lots of people have written about the changes that are taking place in the older types of media, but Terry Heaton links to a post by Jay Rosen that is significant.
We’re early in the rise of of semi-pro journalism but we’re well into the decline and of an old way of life within the tribe of professional journalists. I call them a tribe because they share a culture and a sense of destiny, and because they think they own the press– that is theirs somehow because they dominate the practice.
The First Amendment says to all Americans: you have a right to publish what you know, what you think. That right used to be abstractly held. Now it is concretely held because the power to publish has been distributed. Projects that cause people to exercise their right to a free press strengthen the press…
But his point is that we’re living in a monumental definition change of what is ”the press” these days and how the old press is dealing with the advent of the new press. Conventional media has lost it’s seat as the source of news. Any of us can break a story as easily as WKRN or CBS or the Washington Post. (The only real difference is that we’ve got better taste.) And we have the potential for a substantially wider coverage than every local news outlet. If you didn’t feel all warm and comfy from the realization that we are a conglomerate, feel the power you now wield. People like Ariana Huffington are building a new world of communication. When she started, people in the conventional press snickered at the sheer effrontery. Screw ‘em.
Welcome to the new wave, peeps. Give ‘em hell.
6 comments
Pingback by Snickering ‘at the sheer effrontery’ « Newscoma on July 2, 2008 at 2:02 pm
[...] of all, Jim Voorhies has this: But his point is that we’re living in a monumental definition change of what is ”the press” [...]
Comment by Christian on July 2, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Just break it, miss thing. Bring the noise. Be the change you want to see. Conglomerate it, Mary. Huffingtonize it. The local conglomerati needs examples of action, not another wishfull imagined manifest of what we hope to become or yet another welcome to the future that’s been here now for nearly a decade. People who travel around to conference and talk about it or write “about the changes that are taking place in the older types of media” come a dime a dozen.
Comment by jim on July 2, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Nearly a decade, my ass, Christian. The blog world is changing conventional news media just as the Internet has changed the computer industry. One thing that hasn’t changed is the need to write better. Give it a try.
But it’s present tense. It’s currently happening and none of us, even more skilled futurists than I, have no idea how much it will change or if conventional media will remain once the silicon dust settles.
Comment by Christian on July 2, 2008 at 5:14 pm
The blog world is 10 years old, Jim. Just give it to me.
Comment by democommie on July 6, 2008 at 9:02 am
Christian:
The mainstream media is in decline because of their own failure to perform the function for which they exist. They do not inform the public in any meaningful way on most issues. It’s mostly soundbites and fury, signifying a wish to generate ad revenues and phony controversies.
Bloggers, by and large do not get paid and have no incentive to miss inform for profit, but only for fun.
Comment by jim on July 7, 2008 at 8:32 am
Even if it has been around 10 years, for most of that time it was emergent technology, trying to find its way on the tubes from its beginnings as online journaling to what it is becoming. But it’s still evolving. What blogging is now is not what it will be, if its even still aroung in another 10 years.
The “if it bleeds, it leads” mantra of local TV news is ensuring its own demise. The only people I know who watch local news are in their 80s. Watching the news is too depressing and uninteresting.
TV news and local papers have lost their relevance and their place in society. At the same time, blogs won’t replace them – there maybe nothing that does. And no one will care.