This is the season of media Christmas parties. I'm still connected enough that I get invited to a few, in Gotham, and I wanted to convey the following urgent information before passing into the arms of Morpheus. The old media are over. You can feel it. I had a few conversations at this unidentified party that all said, the center is not holding, the old way is passing before us, with grief and denial and glacial calving of icebergs. To wit:
--A friend said that the era in which a journalist would be given a rental car, an air ticket, and an expense account, and told to go report on something, was coming to an end. And what would replace it? Some boohoo followed.
--A friend said that his expense account had been zeroed out, at a certain media corp in a certain influential burg.
--An acquaintance said that Obama's victory was on the backs of new media, and the old media are gonna feel it, in terms of lawmaking and policy.
Very anecdotal, I know. But walking uptown from the party afterward, I had this strong impression that the currents I'm feeling in my own career, of big paydays passing, and blogging engulfing us, and media social networks losing their power, aren't just personal to me, they're happening all 'round us. And the people doing twitter feeds in Mumbai last week are now journalists. And experts like Adam Horowitz who know more about a country than any traditional reporter are now journalists. And the era of The Journalist, as professional generalist, as bigfoot, as flyover boy, as instant expert, is ending. Mixed feelings. But mostly: the blogosphere wouldn't have given us the Iraq war/it's progress.
The Bill Moyers PBS show lays out how the old media 's top print (excluding Knight-Ridder) and Time, Newsweek, etc and TV, including Cable (with the
exception of CSPAN) turned into a simple aggregate propaganda machine selling the Iraq War. Further, it's much cheaper to have talking
head opinion debate, putting on "experts" than it is to afford shoe
leather on the ground to actually report facts here and around the world
to present to the American people.
Phil Donahue actually tried to give the public good reason to be skeptical and looked what happened to him. The mandate to
him during the short life of his skeptical show was he had to have
two conservative/government line amen people on for every sceptic, e.g., Scot Ridder.
There is in fact no effective Fourth Estate anymore.
Does the rule given to Phil Donohue sound familiar? "You need two
amen people on for every sceptic you hve on your show." Of course
Phil and all such ilk were allowed to have as many amen peeps on
as he wanted without any skeptics at all.
In AIPAC circles that's know as "providing context."
Worse, the same system invaded our universities right to the top.
Whatever happened to "Give me the facts, Mam, just the facts."
Instead we get repeated lies and circular sources parading as separate.
Gives a new meaning to "freedom of the press."
The decline of expense accounts and paid travel ended some time ago for other professions. Journalists were too busy stuffing themselves in the corporate chow line to bother noticing.