Feature
Will the Next Press Be Capitalist?
It will if freedom remains on the American agenda. From our July-August issue.
(Page 3 of 4)
Perhaps a little-less-than-anarchist organization would leverage the energy and abilities of local and regional “social reporting networks” but hang together just enough to avoid hanging separately?
IV.
The next media is already converging—and convergence opens new possibilities for the enterprising “little guys” who know economic independence, political liberty, and free expression are mutually reinforcing experiments in the bloody, tortured, and all too frequently enslaved history of humankind.
The hardware is converging. The 2009 Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show confirmed the computer monitor’s victory over the television set. This convergence threatens the business models of broadcasters and cable companies. By the end of 2009 most HDTV’s will sport USB and Ethernet connections so owners may upload and store personal photos and videos. Blu-Ray DVD players will have Ethernet connections. (If you don’t know the meaning of USB, Ethernet, and Blu-Ray—your greatgrandchildren do.)
The software has already converged. Coffee, tea, or milk? Text, audio, or video? People want what they want when they want it. Stated negatively, this is selfishness. Stated positively, individual needs and tastes differ, and people prefer choice. Stalinism provided one loaf of stale bread, sometimes. Zabar’s will sell you six or seven varieties of fresh croissants. “Convergence media” software provides information in a digital format most convenient and desirable to the user. An airline passenger may tell the tray-juggling flight attendant with the coffee and tea she’d prefer a cocktail. Sophisticated convergence media software can provide a blended cocktail of text, audio, and video (for example, video with hyper-linked footnotes referring the audience listener- viewer-reader to source documents and alternative analyses) based on need, utility, or momentary whim.
The hardware and the software are here. The business models—the ways and means of monetizing and organizing—are at hand.
Convergence models already exist. More than a decade ago, Rupert Murdoch warned media corporations that the computer and Internet made their business models unsustainable. Murdoch has assembled his own “convergence media conglomerate”—a macro-empire with audio, video, and text elements housed in “legacy technology” associated with radio, television, and magazine-newspaper formats. As the future arrived, he also bought high-traffic websites.
The software tool sets to reach the hardware are available to talented, creative individuals operating in agile, cooperative organizations that have minimized or eliminated the Industrial Age overhead strangling the sclerotic media giants. Savvy producers of “content people find relevant and useful” will deliver it in multiple-digital formats. An editor must also be a producer and a director—quite a demanding skill set, but those skills operating “digital convergence micro-empires” will spur a new era of small-town journalism where the “new little guys” have very “big guy” capabilities, if they learn to use them creatively.
The vast majority of little guys, unlike Murdoch and Carlos Slim and a handful of unusual small markets, must shoot the horse. Desperate, surrounded cavalry troopers shoot their horses to give them temporary fortresses—to survive the onslaught, then escape the trap. Shooting the horse means ditching paper. The sooner they do it the better—and bye-bye printing costs, paper costs, ink costs, truck delivery costs, and increasingly unreliable home delivery services that can’t find a subscriber’s house (even when using digital maps), much less plop a paper on the driveway.
Reliable delivery matters, but in the digital world points of sale proliferate. Running a microempire requires establishing new mutual support arrangements. The smart “micro-empire” will link with the best broadband service (converge with the infrastructure) and in ideal situations provide the “most local” user interface with the broadband service. This creates opportunities for delivering entertainment content and a news service that is elaborative while leveraging “social network” community input and feedback capability. Readers with picture- and video-capable cell phones are text, video, and audio resources. As gadfly bloggers, they are investigators. Read-view-listen provides multiple ways to advertise as well as deliver content. Mobile phones and PDAs are vehicles for delivering content. Shoot the paper horse, but maintaining a paper pony offers a bridge to digital devices. A weekly broadsheet headline summary of online stories inserted in the grocery store’s freebie ad supplement (available at the store or sent by snail mail) does more than pick up a niche market of shoppers. Put text or video download information by the headline so the shoppers—if they choose to do so—can retrieve the entire story on their phones or PDAs. That would carry a small download fee to non-subscribers, billed through the mobile phone company. An audio summary could play via the phone or PDA through a listener’s car speakers as he drives home from the store.
The “micro-empire” may also feed hourly updates to local radio and local TV—at least until the micro-empire becomes local television. As “web jitter” disappears and TV episodes become webisodes, the micro-empire is positioned to replace cable television and perhaps broadcast as well. “Cartoon webisodes” already on the Internet are 21st-century comic pages.
How would a micro-empire function in Grand Junction or Muleshoe? The micro-empire is distributed. Goodbye, impressive buildings and plush lobbies. Headquarters becomes a small brick-and-mortar office in a strip mall with an editor and a copy editor at their computers, an accountant at a computer, and a couple of ad salespeople who work phones and convergence ad design software programs. A webmaster is on call (operating out of his home). Everyone else works from home. Save the water-cooler gossip for occasional meetings in the headquarters conference room. Daily story conferences are web-based conferences with everyone capable of audio, video, and written input.
Reporters cover key local stories—doing what they have always done—and file a blog entry on the scene, then follow up with a more complete report once they have time to write it or produce it. But in this new world no report is ever quite complete. Community subscribers may add comments or link to their own blogs (with the convergence corporation the center of a community “social network” blog). Local bloggers with an interest in particular issues serve as tipsters and over time (and with track record for accuracy) the most reliable become paid stringers. Bloggers with analytical and literary skills are already columnists—the local micro-empire will tout them and link to them, to mutual advantage. To build community, have a monthly coffee klatch inviting bloggers and commenters from the local community to meet face to face, and make a video of the meeting. The show will become “must see” video locally, and the best will reach a global audience.
The micro-empire seeks links and partnerships with other small-market convergence media— forming their own “new era wire service.” Original material is always copyrighted—the smart “new little guys” will take the bet that “link to origin” will eventually lead to “pay to origin” royalties. “Pay to read” has had mixed results—but “pay for depth” via myriad hyperlinks leading to original content holds promise, especially for a lean “micro” business. A number of big guys seem to think an iTunes-like subscription service for media content (mimicking Apple’s music download service) will sure-fire save their organizations. They understand lots and lots of “small” can add up. Ping-pong balls are buoyant. Speedily stuff a zillion ping-pong balls into a punctured, listing Titanic and despite the jagged gash in the hull their wave-licked wreck could— theoretically—stay afloat… hypothetically…a while…maybe. (The online Wall Street Journal does well with paid subscribers—and that predates Murdoch’s acquisition of Dow Jones.)
Every morning (local time) the outfit e-mails a concise, link-rich morning edition to paid subscribers. The e-mail edition is an opportunity for a premium advertisement—one that can be tailored to an individual reader. (The reader decides if she wants tailored ads—some will, some won’t.) Interesting companies like youdata.com have developed routines that pay audience members for their time in watching “tailored” advertising.
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Mattled| 7.27.09 @ 9:37AM
I'd be happy if the next media would stop deciding who is the best candidate (in their opinion) and providing around 5 billion dollars in free PR.
This last election proved if nothing else that they were emboldened by the 2006 'win", i.e. Foley/Craig scandal/non-scandal and went all out Obama in 2008.
They are paying the price and I wish their decline would accelerate.
I don't watch any network news or morning shows and therefore my local news is also limited.
Once the local affiliates figure out that they are losing millions of viewers because of their respective networks bias, they might use their clout to level the playing field. I won't hold my breath.
Haven't received my local paper in over 4 years and even if they delivered it for free I would demand they cease.
Good riddance Wolf, Charlie, Campbell, Diane, Katie and all the rest.
The only public you now serve is the Obama administration. Good luck with that.
JAH666| 7.27.09 @ 10:12AM
Excellent analysis Mr. Bay! Changing technologies and social conventions always precede changes in the delivery of information. Guttenberg (maybe spelled wrong) and his invention of moveable type couple to the printing press, was resisted by the church, then embraced as It saw that the technology was going to stick. Today's instant communications and virtual social community combined with the enquiring minds and entrpreneurial spirit of humanity WILL lead to the convergence Mr. Bay writes about. It can't fail to happen. The only question remaining is, who will control this new, powerful information medium? That is the crux of his piece in my view. The restrictive governments of China, Iran, and others will attempt to control this medium as a control on their peoples and may succeed. Will America go the path towards more and more gevernment control of The People? If that trend that is now taking shape for the last decades continues, the adherents of that controlling government will use the convergent information gathering/diseminating technology that is emerging to sway/lead/control the American people. Winston Smith wrote in his diary (in Orwell's 1984, for those who don't know) that all freedom extends from the freedom to believe that two plus two equals four.
Mattled| 7.27.09 @ 12:32PM
I used to tune in to 60 Minutes or World News with Gibson pretty often.
My local ABC affiliate would provide me the 6:00 news and I would leave it on to get Charlie.
Then it all of a sudden became obvious that they were systematically targeting anything conservative and propping up Obama the Messiah.
Couldn't handle it any more. The Networks, and I noticed CNN too, started to just report "half" the news. Leaving stories at mid-story.
Then it was a bout 1/3 of the news.
Now, they just make it up, or they allow their guests to make things up and go unchallenged.
The local paper? Anything that had to do with minorities it was always societies fault and no fault of the minority.
That and the writing was horrific. When the Sunday ads got more interesting than the content of the paper, we cancelled.
Hardius| 7.27.09 @ 3:46PM
The downfall of the media, both printed and electronic, is that the many are owned by the few. If we wish for the media to report balanced news then there needs to independence from the corporate board room where the only goal is profit.
I spend an immense amount of time surfing the web trying to find news on the issues that interest me. The traditional media has fallen so far that they wouldn't recognize the truth if it ran over them in broad daylight. I don't want opinions, I want verifiable facts and numbers, if they have to bring on an "expert" then it ceases to be news and becomes opinion.
Their use of sound bytes is another issue that makes me grit my teeth in frustration and almost always exposes thier bias.
Their failure to deal with complex issues in a balanced manner leaves me wondering how much I really care if they fail. I may just be Joe six pack to them but my desire to know the facts far out strips their ability to reveal them.
I probably do not appreciate how their failure will impact our Nation but I have seen the negative impact of their participation far more times than I have seen a positive impact.
A free press has been missing from this Nation for a long time and all we see is sleaze over substance.
Thom| 7.27.09 @ 5:29PM
“independence from the corporate board room where the only goal is profit.” Hardius, your points are valid but if their only goal were profits they wouldn’t be failing…… What’s lacking from their “goals” sheet is the same thing that is ultimately killing them, competition and a drive for customers. They loath competition and run away customers because their top goal is something not related to a business goal. We have three network “news” organizations and typically one major newspaper per SMA delivering the same product under slightly different packaging. That’s like buying one of Government motors division products and then trying to make the case the Chevy, Buick, Olds and Pontiac all built on the same chassis are in fact different products. They aren’t and for the same reasons half the population turned away from Government Motors Group and Ford they’ve turned away from the one party news business. No more difficult than that.
Liberal Reader| 7.27.09 @ 5:37PM
Good journalism depends upon ownership that is comfortable with fairly small profits.
The investment required by good journalism simply does not lend itself to huge profits the way Fox News / Tabloid News outfits do.
Fox News changed the entire model of broadcast news. Instead of being led by a team of veteran journalists who met each day to decide what was in the public's interest to know, Fox meets to decide what its most valuable demographics would like to hear. That's not journalism, it's prostitution.
Which is all well and good. This is a free country, and if you want to waste your time on that sort of thing, more power to you. But it's not good journalism you're enjoying, it's just entertainment.
Fox is, of course, no longer alone. MSNBC is a disgraceful copier of the Fox formula. CNN is perhaps a little less awful, but not by much.
My advice? For broadcast news, stick with the News Hour (even Limbaugh concedes that Leher is the "smartest guy" in major news broadcasts) or NPR and supplement that with whatever "conservative" programs or publications make you happy.
Thom| 7.27.09 @ 6:37PM
Liberal Reader, good journalism is driven by good journalists not profits. The profits come when you deliver a good product or not. The Boob Tube however is driven by ratings and has been a primary source of entertainment from day one. If you have to pander to the emotional side of the brain to hold viewers perhaps real news shouldn’t be presented in that format. NPR would blow away if not government subsidized.
Liberal Reader| 7.27.09 @ 7:10PM
Thom --
1. You seem to make a distinction between profit and ratings that I don't quite understand.
2. There is no evidence -- none -- that the best journalistic outfits are the most profitable. From an a priori standpoint, it certainly wouldn't follow. Conservatives today tend to generalize from models of capitalist efficiencies to an extent that Adam Smith never would have dreamed of: just because people want it, doesn't mean it's good for them.
3. NPR, in fact, has grown to be one of the most successful news organizations in the country. It is almost entirely reliant upon donations and corporate sponsorship. I think tax dollars pay for about 5% of its total workings.
Liberal Reader| 7.27.09 @ 7:12PM
Correction: 2% of NPR's overall budget (according to NPR) is from government grants.
JohnC.| 7.27.09 @ 7:14PM
I do hope the next pres. is not a capitalist! I hope he is a free marketer, a person who believes in American exceptionalism and also the Constitution. Capitalists get in bed with every power structure from Marxists to emperors to chieve their goals. Hell, they just slept with the most leftist, slimey pinkos to ever inhabit the halls of our government to achieve thier goals on bailouts. Remember, it was Marx who coined the term capitalist, not Adam Smith. There is a reason for that.
Thom| 7.27.09 @ 7:48PM
Liberal Reader, you see no connection between good journalism and profits? I think the evidence abounds anywhere you look today. By that reasoning the “best” of any profession would have no relevance to the outcome of the enterprise they are employed in and I think you don’t have to look too far to see that at work across the board. Using the purest definition of “profit” the best Lemonade stand is going to get the business if it produces the product most people want at a price they can pay and stay in business which requires a “profit” even for non profit businesses. If customers aren’t buying your Lemonade I think the idea that “profits” aren’t involved are fairy tales gone bad time and time again.
What % of the market that NPR serves does it have? Take away that 2-5% subsidy and you have the economy we have now. I’ve seen how donation driven public service media work, they are niche at best else they wouldn’t need either corporate donations or tax payer subsidy.
Dean Vander Linde| 7.27.09 @ 8:29PM
Liberal Reader:
If only 2 percent of NPR's funding consists of government grants, then they really wouldn't miss the revocation of government support, since it is such an insignificant amount.
One thing that makes me wince is when people use the phrase, "the media is." It should be "the media are." "Media" is the plural form of "medium."
Thom| 7.27.09 @ 8:35PM
This is why John Adams said our form of government is only fit for a moral people. An amoral government is only concerned with its power and regardless of the underpinning economic system it will become corrupt eventually without safe guards. A corrupt government equals a corrupt society at large.
Liberal Reader| 7.27.09 @ 9:27PM
Thom --
You illustrate my point.
Journalism is not lemonade. Necessary information is not a commodity.
Liberal Reader| 7.27.09 @ 9:42PM
The main stream media ARE mostly driven by profit, and they are responsible for Americans being completely confused about some basic truths.
PROFITS are why Lou Dobbs, that beastly and incomparable liar, has a job. From his perch, he confuses thousands into actually believing "birther" conspiracies, which are then reinforced by blathering all over cable news.
(The American Spectator's R. Emmett Tyrrell did a terrific job on Hard Ball this weak helping to expose all this nonsense, and he wrote a great piece earlier this week about it.)
When President Bush left office, 60% of Americans still believed the 9.11 attacks were executed by Iraqis, which is completely false, but profit driven media were not able to dislodge propaganda skillfully promulgated -- in a deniable way, of course -- by the White House.
I read somewhere that 15% of people in Texas think Obama is a Muslim, and probably that many think he's a socialist because profit driven media blathering has replaced actual journalism.
In short, the "market of ideas" needs to be distinguished from the "free market." The two might be companions, but they're not a married couple of "one flesh," and that's for damn sure.
End of the world by design| 7.28.09 @ 5:07PM
By Dr. Elias Akleh, Information Clearing House,
In mid 1970s the American Power Elite drew a “Grand Plan” to control and to monopolize global oil and nuclear energy resources, for he who controls energy resources determines the fate of nations. The base of this “Grand Plan” is the invasion of energy rich countries to directly control their resources, and to create subservient governments that would exploit their own people as cheap labor to harvest energy for the United States.
The collapse of the Soviet Union had created a window of opportunity for the United States to ensure and to affirm its global superiority through expansion and controlling energy resources without any real opposition. The attacks of 911 were necessary requirements for the Bush administration to wage a “global war against terror” that would serve as a cover up for American hegemony. President Bush borrowed Mussolini's fascist motto of “If you are not with me, you are against me” and turned it into “You are either with us or with the terrorist” to terrorize weaker nations into accepting American expansions.
Part of the “Grand Plan”, which deals with the Arab World (Middle East) and South East Asia, was handed down to the Bush/Cheney administration for execution. The invasions and destructions of Afghanistan and Iraq are just the beginning. Iran, Syria, and Lebanon are next. Controlling Iran is very important to the American administration. Iran sits on a lake of oil and has large deposits of uranium that, when mined and refined, could make Iran a super global power. Controlling Iran leads to the containment of China (America's greatest competitor), who depends heavily on Iranian oil to satisfy its growing hunger for energy. Geographically Iran makes the shortest and the most economical route for Kazakhstan's oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea ,north, to the Persian Gulf south with all the oil-tankers traffic. Iran also fits perfectly within the line of American hegemony in South East Asia. Listening to Bush's speeches – especially his speech to the United Nation last September 2006- one can detect his “enthusiasm” for “spreading democracy and freedom” into the “despotic Middle East” with Iraq as an example.
The Bush/Cheney administration started its overt aggression against Iran immediately after 911 attacks. Bush described Iran as one of the “axis of evil” sponsoring “terrorist” groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas, who are in reality defending themselves against Israeli aggression. After the American invasion of Iraq the American administration accused Iran of instigating a civil war in Iraq by supporting Shiites against Sunnis, and of opening its borders wide for terrorists to enter Iraq. The administration is accusing Iran of building a nuclear bomb, and is continuously threatening its government to abandon its nuclear “ambitions” or else face dire consequences including nuclear strikes (a paradox of using nuclear weapon to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons). Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State described Iran as a “central bank for world terrorism” that is threatening the stability of the Middle East.
guo| 7.1.10 @ 5:15AM
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