The death of journalism? What?

[Cain]

Yeah, that's true, I kinda forgot he is, in fact, drawing a paycheck, though he's still somewhat closer to new media journalism than the traditional, if only due to the platform he works from.

What do I think will eventually happen?  I'm not sure.  For a while I feared we'd go the way of London Times - paywalls everywhere.  The New York Times reaffirmed some of those fears, but there doesn't seem a great rush to follow in their footsteps...yet.

I think the best way to view the media business and the way it is heading is as a variant of a monopsony:

is a market form in which only one buyer faces many sellers. It is an example of imperfect competition, similar to a monopoly, in which only one seller faces many buyers. As the only or majority purchaser of a good or service, the "monopsonist" may dictate terms to its suppliers in the same manner that a monopolist controls the market for its buyers.

Now, this isn't strictly the case, as obviously there are lots of individual buyers, but if you treat them as a collective, what you see is a public, dictating the terms of: free, easily accessible infotainment and content-free controversy.

Monopsony's are bad, because they lead to suppliers going bust and a reduction in the diversity and quality of goods available.  This stage can precede a monopoly, or ogliopoly.  Media has, in a sense, already been moving in this direction, as the number of independent media businesses has been shrinking since the early 90s, putting concentrated power in the hands of smaller and smaller groups of people.

What I would imagine is we would see a further reduction in quality reporting, unless you are willing to pay through the nose for it (geopolitical consultancy companies will give you good and accurate news and analysis...for a price.  A high price).  The media will rely more and more on unpaid bloggers, of dubious skill and qualifications, who are willing to work for free in return for exposure (the Huffington Post being a prime example...built entirely on the labours of its unpaid bloggers, sold for millions by the site owner).  This allows them to consolidate profits, while bringing in further clicks. 

You'll see a lot more manufactured controversy and puporsefully provocative articles too.  The Daily Mail is the world leader in this field.  By having expensive, glossy pictures, and incredibly stupid and infammatory articles that hordes of idiot bloggers will link to in order to sneer, they lead the world in generating click-based advertising.

So if you want an image of the future, the one that comes to mind for me is the nightmarish mix of the Daily Mail and Huffington Post models...stamping on the human face....forever.

[Kai]

Yeah, that's true, I kinda forgot he is, in fact, drawing a paycheck, though he's still somewhat closer to new media journalism than the traditional, if only due to the platform he works from.

What do I think will eventually happen?  I'm not sure.  For a while I feared we'd go the way of London Times - paywalls everywhere.  The New York Times reaffirmed some of those fears, but there doesn't seem a great rush to follow in their footsteps...yet.

I think the best way to view the media business and the way it is heading is as a variant of a monopsony:

is a market form in which only one buyer faces many sellers. It is an example of imperfect competition, similar to a monopoly, in which only one seller faces many buyers. As the only or majority purchaser of a good or service, the "monopsonist" may dictate terms to its suppliers in the same manner that a monopolist controls the market for its buyers.

Now, this isn't strictly the case, as obviously there are lots of individual buyers, but if you treat them as a collective, what you see is a public, dictating the terms of: free, easily accessible infotainment and content-free controversy.

Monopsony's are bad, because they lead to suppliers going bust and a reduction in the diversity and quality of goods available.  This stage can precede a monopoly, or ogliopoly.  Media has, in a sense, already been moving in this direction, as the number of independent media businesses has been shrinking since the early 90s, putting concentrated power in the hands of smaller and smaller groups of people.

What I would imagine is we would see a further reduction in quality reporting, unless you are willing to pay through the nose for it (geopolitical consultancy companies will give you good and accurate news and analysis...for a price.  A high price).  The media will rely more and more on unpaid bloggers, of dubious skill and qualifications, who are willing to work for free in return for exposure (the Huffington Post being a prime example...built entirely on the labours of its unpaid bloggers, sold for millions by the site owner).  This allows them to consolidate profits, while bringing in further clicks. 

You'll see a lot more manufactured controversy and puporsefully provocative articles too.  The Daily Mail is the world leader in this field.  By having expensive, glossy pictures, and incredibly stupid and infammatory articles that hordes of idiot bloggers will link to in order to sneer, they lead the world in generating click-based advertising.

So if you want an image of the future, the one that comes to mind for me is the nightmarish mix of the Daily Mail and Huffington Post models...stamping on the human face....forever.

I'm not sure I agree with this analysis, though I can't quite qualify why. Something about a persons ability to choose on the internet, and the fact that most sites these days generate revenue via advertisements. Hm.

[navkat]

I think it's something to keep in mind that most of the people we associate with are a type of informational elite, who have not only the resources but the knowledge to seek accurate information from alternative sources. Most people, particularly the poor and less-educated, operate under resource constraints which have the effect of limiting their information sources to those which are "free", not necessarily in terms of financial cost but in terms of time and energy output cost. Furthermore they do (as we have been discussing in threads about education and indoctrination) tend to trust "authoritative" sources such as major media companies.

This is one of the many reasons the media monopoly is a bad, bad thing.

YES.

I have lived for a while now with the intellectual, financial and cultural (that's important too. I run in circles where "google it" and "citation needed" is expected) advantages where there's really not much of an excuse for me to not challenge the things I saw on TV. For others, not so much. We need to remember that and forgive them for some of what we perceive as "stupidity." If you don't have it, you don't have it and ya can't know whatcha don't know, you dig?

You could present them with the story about the Fox News growth-hormone debacle and what can they do? They might stop watching Fox for awhile and then turn on what? Nancy Grace? It's all the same fucking thing. Even the papers, which are worse in my opinion: written at a 5th grade level and so locally biased and without real out-of-area insight, they can be as trusted to report what's going on as a subscription to my insurance company's free newsletter. I've caught glaring grammatical errors in the Press-Register almost every time I've opened it up. These are not people who are too picky about getting it right.

WE'RE ALL FUCKED.

[Don Coyote]

This thread is starting to read like the reading for my global media class.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This thread is starting to read like the reading for my global media class.

There's a reason for that.

Those academics aren't as stupid as they look.

[hirley0]

This thread is starting to read like the reading for my global media class.

There's a reason for that.

Those academics aren't as stupid as they look.

A Link would help interpertation/translation

Au:Ag of the new emerging S.A. Economic standards

[P3nT4gR4m]

Lately I've been thinking about the internets from the point of view that it has the potential to be an epic fuck up on the kind of scale we haven't seen since democracy and for exactly the same reason - the stoopid majority will always make the dumb decision or (in the case of journalism) drive the signal to noise ratio right through the floor and straight to hell.

[Cainad (dec.)]

This thread is starting to read like the reading for my global media class.

There's a reason for that.

Those academics aren't as stupid as they look.

Hey now.

I'm an academic, and I'm at least TWICE as stupid as I look.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This thread is starting to read like the reading for my global media class.

There's a reason for that.

Those academics aren't as stupid as they look.

Hey now.

I'm an academic, and I'm at least TWICE as stupid as I look.