"What will metro media markets look like in five years? 10 Years? There
are a lot of people pondering these questions. That’s evident in the
sheer amount of chatter – some of it bordering on desperation – about
online subscriptions, micro-payments and other revenue models. One of
the best and most comprehensive discussions of “new business models for
news” is here, a presentation by CUNY’s Steve Shepard and Jeff Jarvis at the Aspen Institute’s Forum on Communication and Society."
"Trust in news media has reached a new low, with record numbers of
Americans saying reporting is inaccurate, biased and shaped by special
interests, according to a survey set to be released Monday.
The survey of 1,506 people interviewed in July by the Pew Research Center
showed that self-described Republicans continued to take the dimmest
view of news organizations, but discontent among Democrats was catching
up."
If you're interested in media reform, take the time to read the entire speech by Craig Aaron excerpted and linked below:
"I'm here to report on what's happening in Washington.
Washington is changing. It has been a different place. Even that
swampy, muggy August weather hasn't seemed so disgusting this year.
There's still optimism in the air.
I'm here to tell you that if you care about media and the arts, it
matters who is in the White House. It matters who controls Congress.
That's because decisions being made right now -- and in the next few
years -- at the White House, in Congress, and at these agencies are
going to shape the future of all media for a generation.
The good news is we now have friends in some of these key jobs. You
know them. They will read your e-mails and return your calls. They want
your ideas. They want to do the right thing.
Yes, Washington is changing. But there is a whole lot of Washington that still needs to change.
At Free Press, we often find ourselves going up against big phone
and cable companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and
AT&T.
We recently looked at just the first six months of the Obama
administration. And we found that those four companies and their trade
associations alone had hired more than 500 lobbyists -- that's one for almost every member of Congress -- and spent more than $45 million. And that's just what they report."
First off, a confession: I am an avid consumer of news, in fact, some might call me a news addict -- I start the day with emailed links sent to me via numerous newsletters that I've subscribed to over the years, then I move on to the New York Times, and later on in the evening I watch the cable news I've saved on my DVR. If you speak to me at 9am and I don't know the major news stories, I'm sick in bed. I truly do love and appreciate news. So, it's not lightly that I say that maybe, just maybe, we will be better off without papers.
Last spring, I attended the Free Press "Changing Media" conference in Washington, DC and we were posed with the question: "how should we save newspapers?" Perhaps stupidly, I said that I wasn't really sure if we should save newspapers -- after all in our corporate ruled world, how much of what we get is real "news"? Everyone in my discussion group was aghast! I had broken the holy grail by challenging the value of what we have now. Maybe, I suggested, we have an opportunity to change the news industry now that the newspaper business model has fallen off a cliff? I still think this is a rather sensible idea, actually. Remember how the "news" failed as the fourth branch in the run up to the Iraq war? And what about how the shock value of a few wingnuts has taken over the healthcare reform debate? Let's not let a lack of imagination cause us to miss an opportunity. Perhaps, a better strategy would be to re-imagine the news in the digital age. Why try to rescue an industry that has failed to attract consumers, and more importantly has failed to provide the public with the information we need to make decisions in our democracy?
Here is Michael Moore discussing some of the reasons the newspaper industry has fallen apart in classic Michael Moore style!:
"But the only certainty about the future of news is that it will be
different from the past. It will no longer be dominated by a few big
titles whose front pages determine the story of the day. Public opinion
will, rather, be shaped by thousands of different voices, with as many
different focuses and points of view. As a result, people will have
less in common to chat about around the water-cooler. Those who are not
interested in political or economic news will be less likely to come
across it; but those who are will be better equipped to hold their
rulers to account. Which is, after all, what society needs news for."
The Free Press Media Reform conference last Thursday in Washington D.C.
was an interesting event. The media policy reform organization was
able to obtain heavy weight speakers including three former FCC
Chairs, Barack Obama's current National Economic Policy leader, and
the CEO of NPR. The conference focused on broadband policy, internet reform, and the crisis in journalism. The issues were framed around policy initiatives. Unfortunately, the conference did not touch on issues that will impact the future of media including fundamental changes to our mode of production with the change to production of intangibles (brand) versus tangibles (products), and the power of the internet to shift the paradigm of market capitalism in the same way that other new technologies have changed political economic paradigms in the past. While the current policy issues are certainly important, the conversation needs to grow to incorporate the economic and sociological changes we are currently seeing related to the internet.
New report calls for national strategy to contend with the crisis in journalism
"Traditional media have been battered by a perfect storm, as the rise
of the Internet and the disappearance of traditional ad dollars
collided with the economic downturn," said Craig Aaron,
senior program director of Free Press and co-author of the report. "But
many of the media industry's wounds are self-inflicted, the result of
bad business decisions and failed strategy, aided by idle regulators
who looked the other way. We need a new approach."
"American journalism is in trouble, and the problem is not just
financial. My profession is in distress because for more than a decade
it has been chasing the false idols of fame and fortune. While engaged
in those pursuits, it forgot its readers and the need to produce a
commercial product that appealed to its mass audience, which in turn
drew advertisers and thus paid for it all. While most corporate owners
were seeking increased earnings, higher stock prices, and bigger
salaries, editors and reporters focused more on winning prizes or
making television appearances."
