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The problem with journalism and media today is that the fierce streak of journalistic independence is long, long gone; media outposts have become too connected,
by micaksica 10y ago
The problem with journalism and media today is that the fierce streak of journalistic independence is long, long gone; media outposts have become too connected, too hungry at the teat of the powerful for any scoop at all now that they do not have regional monopolies on information. Because of the supply of content outlets - blogs, newspapers, magazines, what have you - the power has shifted back to those that have the information in the first place. It does not matter the industry. If you are a unicorn tech startup, you build relationships with journalists that give you positive reviews, and shun those that do not -- because there are enough to go around and still get your message out, and the journos are hungry for pageviews. The same goes for CEOs and "confidential sources" on Wall Street or Main Street, or politicians gravitating toward CNN or Fox News, or respective anchors that paint them positively that ensnare the audiences they are targeting. It is the way modern PR works.
The quantity of journalists are now the surplus, and the real scoops that generate traffic (and revenue) are scarce. Because of this economic inversion, we now have the companies running the media institutions. In a mainstream economic environment, you then have two choices: media that plays into the confirmation biases of its readership (customers) - just as NYT is doing here - or investigative journalism that is digging up heretofore unknown stories people are trying to conceal (eg The Intercept, Muckrock) to get the pageviews and therefore the ad revenue.
- karmelapple 10y agoAlso, what is the incentive to scoop in today's media climate? If one news outlet breaks a story - even if it's a multi-month, highly-researched think piece - every other website will quickly summarize it and provide one link back to it. The link back is at least citing the source, but the summary is likely good enough for most users, and the originating news outlet gets no ad revenue if the reader only reads the summary. How can we shift that incentive?
- lambertsimnel 10y agoBe careful about shifting the incentive. One way to get scoops is to cozy up to news makers, who are typically powerful people and often politicians in government.
- zigzigzag 10y agoPaywalls. Quite a few right-leaning papers in the UK have already gone that way. As have WashPo and the NYT! The Telegraph and the Times are both behind paywalls. For the Times, their readership crashed but their profits went up.
- paganel 10y ago> media outposts have become too connected, too hungry at the teat of the powerful for any scoop at all now that they do not have regional monopolies on information. I had this realization 7 or 8 years ago (just before the financial crisis started) when reading a book on the history of Lazard, the investment bank. At some point towards the end (i.e. closer to our days) it mentioned that one of its then main executives (Steven Rattner) was a very close friend with the NYTimes publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Come the financial crisis and the US car industry almost going bust Steven Rattner is appointed as car tzar (whatever that is), even though he had no experience in managing anything automotive-related, it was all based on "let's choose people from a small clique of our friends and friends of friends", where that clique includes investment bankers, newspaper owners, venture capitalists, politicians, "media personalities" and the like. This is not how a true democratic and capitalistic system should work.
- micaksica 10y agoCrony capitalism [1] is a thing. It's hardly democratic, but it is a working capitalist system. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism
- clydethefrog 10y agoSince businesses make money and money leads to political power, business will inevitably use their power to influence governments - it's capitalism working as intended.