Steve Borris of Pajamas Media deconstructs the decline of traditional media, which, it turns out, isn’t quite as traditional as we thought:
We have lost perspective on what a reporter actually is — a middleman. On one side are news events. On the other are audiences who want to know about them. A reporter’s job is to move “the truth” from Point A to Point B as accurately as possible.
This middleman function, with reporters serving as mere links in a news supply chain, was never needed until fairly recently. Before the printing press was invented, we were all receivers and transmitters of news, spreading it by word-of-mouth. Soon after its invention, multitudes of mostly one-man print-shops, as a sideline, printed newspapers to supplement this word-of-mouth process. These printers wrote their own articles blending facts with opinion, much like bloggers do today. Others also contributed, often without receiving compensation or attribution — citizens, gossips, letter-writing “correspondents” from other towns, and similarly-operating foreign and domestic newspapers whose stories were simply lifted.
Since this is what news looked like at the time of the Founding Fathers, they gave no particular mandate to reporters, a function that did not even exist at the time. The “freedom of the press” they cited in the First Amendment was not about “the press,” but about everyone’s right to freely use a printing press to express their views without government interference, supplementing the free speech clause that allowed everyone to express their views orally.
Read the whole thing.
After having observed the behavior of the news media thus far in the 2008 race for president, I look forward to the fulfillment of their long-predicted demise.
March 25th, 2008
… You are really missing out!
Okay, I’m just kidding. I’m no Barack Obama. But if you happen to be in Washington DC on Wednesday, March 5th, you should stop by the Politics Online Conference and check out a session in which I will be a panelist.
The session is called “Does Web 2.0 Work in Politics?” Here’s a little blurb on it:
Panel information:
Title: Does Web 2.0 work in politics?
Description: The political world says that it’s trying to incorporate interaction and interactivity into online politics. So far, all we’ve seen is marketing in the name of Web 2.0. Can Web 2.0 work in the political space to build authentic collaborations between citizens and government? Or has it just another marketing gimmick?
Day/Time: Wednesday, March 5 from 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
February 28th, 2008
While I don’t think I agree with the substance of blogger Amy Jussel’s complaint about Target’s ad campaign, I’m surprised to learn from this New York Times story that Target does not interact with new media outlets at all. I think that’s a shortsighted communications strategy, to say the very least.
January 28th, 2008
From Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win , by William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre:
1. Do you have a distinctive and disruptive sense of purpose that sets you apart from your rivals?
2. Do you have a vocabulary of competition that is unique to your industry and compelling to your employees and customers?
3. Are you prepared to reject opportunities that offer short-term benefits but distract your organization from its long-term mission?
4. Can you be provocative without provoking a backlash?
5. If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would really miss you and why?
January 28th, 2008
The Nashua (NH) Telegraph has an article up on the impact blogs are having on the 2008 primaries in New Hampshire.
October 1st, 2007
The Economist urges caution when wading into the Health 2.0 sphere, always a safe bet:
In some ways it is strange that there is so much discussion of health-related matters online, given that health, like money, is a topic that many people will not discuss even with family members. People do not seem to realise how permanent information can be online, warns Jennifer King, a researcher at the University of California in Berkeley. She worries that personal data could be misused. Some sites mitigate that risk by recommending the use of pseudonyms. So Meg7 talks about her family’s struggle with Lou Gehrig’s disease, Aprilly shares information about babies with colic, and jojo1972 writes about how she handles migraine headaches.
Misinformation is another worry. On the internet, as the old saying goes, nobody knows you are a dog—or an idiot, notes Dan Keldsen of AIIM, a non-profit association based in Silver Spring, Maryland, which helps companies manage digital information. And too much health information can confuse people, says Monique Levy of Jupiter. But a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, DC, suggests that although user-generated information offers consumers more health options, the upside outweighs the risk, says Pew’s Susannah Fox. Nearly one-third of the 100m Americans who have looked for health information online say that they or people they know have been significantly helped by what they found. In contrast, only 3% reported that online advice had caused serious harm.
My experience, however, is that there is a great deal of serious, thoughtful content regarding healthcare in the Web 2.0 environment.
September 14th, 2007
Business 2.0 may be going out of business the old fashioned way, but the current issue nevertheless has an interesting story on what it calls “The Facebook Economy.” The new Web gold rush has everyone from really-way-too-young kids to software companies with fresh capital chasing the next killer app for the increasingly popular social utility site.
Judging from Lindsay Blakely and Michael Copeland’s story, the hot applications—Food Fight, Glitter Text—seem pretty useless to any organization hoping to use Facebook as a core messaging communications tool. But I think Facebook Causes has tremendous potential to change the way public affairs and non-profit campaigns are conducted.
September 14th, 2007
Glenn Reynolds today:
ONE THING YOU’VE GOT TO SAY FOR JOHN MCCAIN — his outreach to the “new media” crowd has been excellent.
Is it immodest to point out that we handle New Media outreach for Sen. McCain?
Speaking of which, here is my recent appearence on Bloggingheads TV.
September 13th, 2007
Michael Agger was hoping to catch a bunch of corporate PR types playing Astroturf games with Wikipedia. Instead, his Wikiskanner adventures revealed a bunch if childish wiki-vandalisms; and most of it from lefty anti-corporate couch potatoes.
August 26th, 2007
Google’s Youtube advertising launch is getting mixed reviews from bloggers and YouTube community types.
Advertising in the Web 2.0 environment remains an unrefined science.
August 24th, 2007
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