Just as the Big Three car manufacturers, with a once-monolithic hold on American consumers, seemed unaware that the public wanted a wider choice of cars (until Japan listened and responded), Pauline Kael’s in-crowd of coastal elites has, if anything, become even more clueless and resistant to emerging changes in the culture and dissemination of information.
How clueless? In 2004, Jonathan Klein, the former executive vice president of CBS News, described blogging as “a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.” Last May, Time-Warner CEO Richard Parsons was quoted as saying, “The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation. They will lose this war if they go to war. The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.”
Just how did the mainstream media (“MSM”) become so monolithic and unresponsive in the first place? And how is the rise of “Weblogs” helping to establish a new, more “fair and balanced” form of journalism?
Interesting and informative article. Especially from a historic point of view.
Back in the 1960s, a scribe from the Rolling Stone Magazine cornered the CEO of General Motors, and asked him: “Why don’t you make a car like the Volkswagon Beatle?”
The response was: “Small cars make small profits- big cars make big profits”.
General Motors, Ford & Chrysler: You are about to get what is coming to coming to you.
I take nothing… nothing… for information from the MSM in any of its forms. I haven’t for, oh, around 4 years. The MSM doesn’t “do” news. And that’s that.
By the way, I’m better informed now by blogs and talk radio than I EVER was by the CBC, CTV, CBS, the G&M…
Those media outlets are finished; see the line in the article about their “rapidly aging” audience. Ten years, and most of them will be toast. They bring to mind those 5 Navy fighter planes that flew into fog in the Bermuda Triangle in 1945 and just disappeared; one by one these media –ahem– “giants” will just run out of gas and crash, but nobody will really see it happen because quite soon, nobody will even know they were ever around in the first place.
They suck.
If we didn’t have Blogs then half of todays news would go unheard. The MSM prints what it wants, not whats important to us. Thanks for the Blog.
I have been a news hound all my life. Kate’s post describes my sentiments exactly !!
Daily, I obtain the world’s news on the Internet — from many, many sources. Sometimes from those directly involved.
It is so revealing to occasionaly watch TV “news” and see how pathetic it is. The bias in print articles is criminal. It would be hillarious if it were not so sickening.
I would describe the mayor media’s decline this way;
They have ‘Dumbed Down’ the news to such an extent they have become irrelavent Tabloids.
While I agree with the premise of the article, and most everybody’s sentiments, I am less sanguine about the future of the MSM. I don’t share the view that people go to the internet for their news, at least, most don’t.
The tabloidization of the MSM mirrors the decline in intellectual development of the audience. Simply put, mass education since 1970 has been an abject failure. The rise of visual media has absolved the viewer of the necessity to think about what he sees, or develop the critical skills to evaluate it. Wasn’t always so.
Written news first off had to be read, requiring a set of intellectual skills that had to be learned through thoughtful rote practice. Reading the words wasn’t enough – the brain had to build imagery from the words for the reader to comprehend the story. It is in this process that facts of the words get tested – the image makes sense, or it does not, as it’s assembled.
In the current MSM presentation of news, it is responding to an audience who increasingly has not developed the intellecutal skills to “assemble meaningful imagery”, and therefore must pre-assemble the imagery for them. Its a chicken/ egg argument – they are both a product of each other.
People who use the internet for news, especially those who search and filter, acquired those intellectual skills early, and hence use them. The MSM is meaningless for them because there is no content to “assemble”.
Unfortunately, the internet also feeds heavily those who lack the skills, not providing an opportunity to obtain them. Modern education relies heavily on these same delivery systems, and has eschewed the skill development. In terms of mass education, we are much worse off now then post war. People in the pre-war and immediate post war era recognized when they were intellectually incomplete, and sought education to correct that if they were so inclined. Today, in my opinion, the percentage of people who can make that recognition has declined, because of the visual pre-packaging of “news” and information.
We know more today than man ever has, and yet, en masse, we are dumber than we’ve ever been.
Skip, some interesting assertions.
If I’ve got it correct, you contend that school should teach students to read, write, add & subtract, multiply & divide, study ACTUAL history, form meaningful written sentences with proper punctuation, etc… (maybe throw in morning Assembly at which students would be compelled to participate in the singing of the National Anthem). In short, the education system should stick to doing what it was developed to do in the first place.
These practices would ensure that things like trips to see “An Inconvenient Truth” are shelved, as the school day would be filled with the things that the school day SHOULD be filled with. Children would then grow into adulthood with the tools they require to nurture the ability to think critically… in other words, navigate the b.s. that’s out there, and which is so obviously prevalent in the MSM. The MSM would then, for its part, need to actually REPORT news, rather than constantly “editorialize”, because it would recognize that it can no longer depend on an audience that is, essentially, ignorant, and blissfully unaware of its ignorance at that.
Maybe no computers should be set up in classrooms until about grade 8; no calculators, either. No computers in the classroom?! Heck, they’ll get plenty of computers at home, if my daughter is anything to go by. What’s wrong with kids going to a library, learning to use the computerized card catalog, and walking around the joint looking for a book… you know, with dog-eared pages and such… rather than sitting in front of a screen, never moving, and trying to “research” the world from a swivel chair?
Ship, all my life I have heard people say uncomplementary things of the MSM. And yes, not all follow the news but a lot do.
Before the Internet and blogs, there was essentialy, only one news source. Many stations, papers but most “news” came from a very small number of people controlling just a few orgs —- AP, CP, Reuters, ect. Besides being a cheap way for even local media to get the “stories”, it projected a sense of “consistency” —- group think.
Today, those seeking out the news, the real story, it is just a click away. Many, many takes on the same story. The best, such as sda, drudge, instapundent, national review will quickly rise to the top.
And the criminal activity, bias, slant, mistruths, guilty by ommission, of the MSM will be revealed. As it surely is now.
So, skip, these are the reasons the MSM is in decline. Those that do not follow the news will continue not to. But the ones that do will and have migrated to the net where they sooner or later will come upon sources that reveal the real story.
For decades the MSM has relied on classifieds to subsidize their “news” propaganda. Centuries ago, media orgs often started life as an arm of political parties. Left and right. Most still are.
Ask anyone under 60 what their sourse of classifieds is today. Most will say the web —- craigs list, eBay, ect.
The media’s major source of propaganda money is being chocked off.
Google sda ‘Not Waiting For The Astroid’.
Mainstream media!! Where do you suppose they get the news? They check out “Google News” or “Google News Canada” every 30 mins and broadcast the result.
If there’s a tornado in Kansas, and Dorothy disappears for a week, I won’t argue that TV, Radio, Newspapers etc. do a pretty good job of transmitting the adrenilin rush. For in depth analysis of political, scientific, legal and other data however, the more they write and broadcast, the worst they get.
Classic example, the rising Cdn $Dollar$. All I,ve heard from CBC and CTV are the dire results of a stong currency. The CBC interviews Maggie in a downtown Toronto shop. Maggie is shopping for a wedding dress. (That is most likely paid for by her mom.) Maggie looks at the dress and says, “Duhhh, how much dat cost.”
The salesperson, who is embarrassed at having a camera crew in her store, replies, “Duuuh, dat one is five hundred canajun dollars.”
Maggie asks the salesperson, “Duuuh, how much dat dress cost in Detroit??” The clerk refuses to answer, however the journalist, (If he or she is even worthy of the label,) replies, “You can buy that dress in Detroit City for two hundred fifty bucks, US$!”
Hours later, that report in on “The National,” and that’s the anaysis that Canadians will be using as whether or not the strong dollar is good, or bad. And by the way guys, could someone please contact the head office of CBC in Toronto, and have them read this. Tanks.
Johnny: I saw that report. And to think the CBC building in Toronto is a block from all of the major banking towers of this great nation. That’s what you call “in-depth” researh.” And to they get 1.5 billion in Cdn tax dollars every year.
The CEO should read history, the US lost one battle, but they won the war. Perhaps he does know what is going to happen, Old media kept alive by government handouts and kept on a reserve so they don’t bother anyone?
I am with Joe B. all the way. If I had to watch TV for the news I wouldn’t watch it. I would hold my nose and buy the occasional paper, but that’s it.
Good blogs like this one always have comments so that I can post my crap or read yours. It’s great! All of a sudden the parasites at the CBC don’t have the last word anymore. Or the power of censorship.
The voices on the TV and the radio don’t speak for me either. I am as Canadian as they are and I am qualified to tell the MSM to go suck a fart when they appoint themselves to speak for Canada.
I seriously wonder if Canada itself will outlast the MSM. This country is to diverse to be dictated to by the arseholes in Ontario and Queerbec.
I live for the times when blogs give the MSM outlets (CBC) a spanking in public over some particularly odious report. And then the MSM is forced to apologize. Love that.
Jim, cool it. The East-West “friction” is mostly mythinformation, IMO. Perpetuated by the media.
No it’s not Ron.
I lived through the depression of the oil bust, and Turdeau’s NEP programs (that era was a depression, not a recession for Alberta’s youth).
I know you guys in The Land Of Froots and Nuts in BC have no problems with your fellow socialists out east…but I do.
I know you guys in The Land Of Froots and Nuts in BC have no problems with your fellow socialists out east…but I do.
I have a problem with them too.
Over the years, “divisivity” has been the main contribution of the “Party of Inclusivity”