In this recent article on the BBC online site, Dan Gillmor comments on the status of the declining mass media industry. He tries to make some type of case for us suffering because of it.
He talks about mass media journalists being "watchdogs" of the public trust. He really says that. This is that same mass media that recently attempted to create news by bringing a group of Moslems to a NasCar race to attempt to create trouble. Watchdogs of the public trust indeed!
I'm not quite sure why all of these media types drone on about this reality that things are never going to be the same in the media world.
Gillmor begins the article by saying:
A few years ago, a newspaper writer looked at the burgeoning world of online news gathering and dissemination and said: "One of these days we're going to find out what people actually want to read."
"Journalists, accustomed to telling their readers - or viewers or listeners - what they need to know, might have found the idea somewhat disturbing. Here was the possibility that the audience would, via mouse clicks, become the arbiters of what was newsworthy, and that journalistic competition might reflect a lower, perhaps the lowest, common denominator."
The mass media who has been at the lowest common denominator for years is now attempting to reinvent themselves as the "guardians of truth" or those that know better than the rest of us. This elitest nonsense is one of the reasons it is disintegrating. It isn't only technology that is its undoing.
Even think of the site he is writing on. The BBC is basically run like a socialist organization. English taxpayers are forced to pay around $3 billion dollars a year to them. That's one thing I like that Gillmor says (Pay me or go to jail: Now there's a business model).
This thought that mass media deals with serious journalism is such a joke, that I find it hard to believe that someone will even bring that thought up without pushing the laughter button in the background.
What's really happening, and it's happening in numerous areas of life, is that the "priesthoods" are losing their power. This happens in all the major shifts that have happened throughout history. The older industry battles the newer one for pre-eminence. All the older one is ever able to do is to slow the inevitable process down. To use this reality of change as some type of loss concerning "depth and quality" is a joke. What's really happening is that we are finally getting to hear from a lot more people with a lot of different things to say.
This isn't a loss, but a great gain.
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