FAST FOOD MEDIA

The Coming “Empire of New Knowledge”

By Thomas Pany

[This article published in the German-English cyber journal Telepolis, 3/14/2006 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,  http://www.telepolis.de/r4/artikel/22/22245/1.html.]


Should we be anxious or filled with excited expectation about the golden – profitable – age of information, the “empire of new knowledge,” that the media moguls see dawning [1]?

The report of the Guardian unfortunately reveals nothing of the reactions of the audience that heard the latest revolutionary visions of Rupert Murdoch [cf. Are we sleeping through a revolution? (2)] [3] The select guests of the 603-year old guild with the Dickens’ name “The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers” had a rare guest who confronted the media establishment with a Gorbatchevian alternative: “Change or die!”

WHOLE COUNTRIES ENDANGERED

Power will move away from the old elites of the media monopoly, from publishers, bosses and owners. The era of the “media barons” is ending, said Murdoch, the tycoon [4] of a multinational media group. He predicted enormous effects of the information revolution. Whole countries will be built or destroyed by the new technology, not only firms. The large-scale changes that are now underway may not be underestimated, he warned. Failure is certain for societies and firms that would entrench themselves behind a glorious past. Reorientation is imperative:

“A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it.”

Great journalism will always attract readers and traditional newspapers still have several good years ahead. Still the media will become like fast food; news will be quickly accessible and subject to recall everywhere. Murdoch actually underrated the power of the Internet for many years. Now he knows that the net is a creative and destructive technology that rearranges everything in its way. Murdoch’s business now invests $400 million in MySpace.com [5].

Perhaps the dinner guests were impressed by such visionary tidbits. A brief spotlight was cast on how the current transformations in the media and newspaper business are seen on the top floors.

SEISMIC TRANSFORMATION

The actual report [6] of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an institute associated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is far more informative.

The authors of the report do not speak of the end of traditional journalism. Still they see a “seismic transformation of what and how one experiences the world of knowledge nowadays.” They see media power moving from journalists as the classic gatekeepers to the public. Strikingly the public moves from the old to the new media and takes a more active role (blogs, citizen media). Journalists must redefine their role correspondingly and reflect what essential values they want to safeguard. This process begins very slowly, the authors say.

Citizen media and the blogger boom have a shady side in their view that for a long time was not emphasized by anyone. To representatives of “special interests,” the open channels give the possibility of exercising influence anonymously or under another identity. The worry that occupies the authors is not the “marvelous addition of citizen media” to the classic media pool but the decay in observing and controlling powerful institutions and full-time professional jou9rnalists.

MORE AND MORE PUBLICATIONS PUBLISH THE SAME STORIES

The new paradox of journalism is that more and more publications cover fewer and fewer stories. On one hand, this shows that the newspaper branch in the US is very sickly. Even large newspapers and magazines (New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek) drastically cut their newsroom and reporter personnel. On the other hand, journalists are subject to a time pressure so they can no longer afford specialization and have only limited contacts.

The concentration of their journalists on a few popular themes gives newsmakers a control over what the public knows. Government institutions have it easy in enticing the band of reporters, correspondents, crews and paparazzi in the spaces reserved for the press – away from the news. The reporting about Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was an exception since the authorities did not change gears quickly enough.

The kind of reporting that is most endangered is the Big-City-Metro-Paper dominant on the news market in the last century, according to the study. For the authors, this trend is joined with a rather worrisome picture since these newspapers have resources, means and the ambition to guard over city, regional and state institutions as “watchdogs.” This task can hardly be taken over by suburban daily papers or weekly papers. This is also true for the blogger scene since it mainly lives from the reporting of larger publications. The share of reporters in the blogosphere is unfortunately very small.

IDEALISTS HAVE LOST AND ACCOUNTANTS HAVE WON

The battle between journalist idealists and the economically minded leadership in the traditional media corporations is over. That is another conclusion of the study. The forces oriented in good management or economic efficiency have won. Whether voices championing the “public interest” are still present in many news media businesses is no longer certain.

A remarkable change has occurred in the traditional media. While the Internet was once understood as a platform for recycled printed material, a change occurred in 2005. The Internet was finally understood as an independent medium that uses its own form and serves different demands of readers. Whether the younger public can be won is still unclear. Whether the traditional media with their Internet presence will actually change their “culture” or simply hold readers to their traditional publications is still answered.

WILL GOOGLE HAVE TO PAY FOR NEWS IN THE FUTURE?

The so-called news aggregators raise interesting questions to the news industry. Through Google and Yahoo, the news business has become faster. The expiry date of news products is shorter – except with the bloggers that keep stories with valuable content longer.

This happens at the expense of the newsmakers. Either Google and Yahoo must produce news themselves sooner or later and already take the first “baby steps” or the old school news producers must demand money from the news portals in the future, the authors of the study concluded. Can Google and Yahoo become more than technology corporations? To what extent will they orient the values of journalism to the public interest?

[The numbers refer to footnotes in the original Telepolis article.]