The Mass Murder of Mass Media
[I wrote this originally for the University of Washington's The Daily]
Every Sunday, I scan through my Yellow Pages-thick edition of The Seattle Times. It takes me about 10 minutes.
Then I ask myself: When am I finally going to cancel my print subscription?
Do I subscribe out of professional sympathy, being a one-time journalist myself, even as I lose patience with a product that is bereft of locally-reported content? It relies increasingly on syndicated material from out-of-towners like The New York Times and the Associated Press.
And as economic crisis descends, threatening all we once held near and dear, we may soon throw up our hands and declare, “So what if another familiar company dies?”
We will of course hear about how journalism is fundamental to a healthy democracy; that we cannot afford to lose solid, responsible reporting.
I agree. But who said that anything we created during the Industrial Revolution is our only resort?
I’m talking about all those companies that engage in “mass” anything, from The Seattle Times (mass media) to General Motors (mass production). With an explosion of choice — thanks to digital media and globalization — well-known business models are dying. Professionals are losing their strangleholds on their crafts. Competition for our attention and our wallets has exploded. Economic devastation just precipitates the change that is happening right now.
A few months ago, I cheekily declared the death of journalism, and that was to a room full of journalism educators at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Meanwhile, a colleague who teaches at my alma mater, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, said he doesn’t know how much longer students will want to pay upwards of $60,000 for a degree that no longer guarantees a career.
Everything we once believed in — Wall Street, the White House, our hallowed front pages — have failed us at some point in the last decade, with devastating consequences. Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, Lehman Brothers, WMD’s and Sept. 11 have all lead to a profound lack of faith in all that was once powerful in America.
I believe this presents us with a once-in-an-era opportunity to truly create a new media order — a healthier, more decentralized one.
As an open society, we do need to communicate facts and trustworthy information, but that doesn’t mean we need to rely on the old institutions to do this. If they didn’t exist, we would find a way to inform ourselves. Even if that meant we would have to resort to some modern-day version of our 18th century pamphleteers — i.e. blogs, tweets and independent, public journalism.
I’ve heard that journalism doesn’t have an audience problem, it has a consumer problem. Many of us just aren’t willing to pay for our news anymore, with so much more information now freely available online.
Actually, we never did pay for the true cost of news, mass marketing took care of the shortfall through those once unavoidable ads. There’s that word again: mass. And yes, even advertising is in crisis now thanks to the decline of mass media and the rise of so many other ways to share content.
So there’s still demand for news. There’s just less money to pay for supply — and multi-million dollar news anchor salaries.
Obviously, some models still work. This newspaper has a captive, on-campus audience, which guarantees enough self-sustaining revenue. Non-profit organizations such as National Public Radio are holding their own. And the new kids on the block, from the Huffington Post to the West Seattle Blog prove that you can actually make a living from creating relevant, trustworthy content for a sharply-defined — not “mass” — audience.
This new technological reality allows us all to think like communicators, and — if we actually want a journalism career — like entrepreneurs. Online distribution platforms provide great opportunities to produce new content creators, and to reach new audiences. Those old-guard news organizations that will survive the bloody revolution will be the ones who understand this opportunity — and harsh economic reality.
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
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5 Comments, Comment or Ping
Ross
Hanson – You’re too hard on the local dailies
“a product that is bereft of locally-reported content” ????
Not only are they chock full of local content, they are often digging up the stories no one else will do. Today’s Seattle Times front page story is about effective anti-chemical weapon lotion the Pentagon won’t buy because of congressional earmarks (from Hillary Clinton, among others ) to purchase an ineffective powder that just happens to manufactured in certain key Congressional districts. An important story that may get soldiers at Fort Lewis and nationally the protection they need.
Or take the recent Seattle Times expose on MRSA infection rates at hospitals. They only got it because they went through infection reports from hospitals around the state.
The dailies are still doing important in-depth stories involving sophisticated use of computer assisted reporting that almost no one else has the money or comittment to tackle.
The journalism is still vital, important and read. It’s the business model that’s failing.
Dec 7th, 2008
Alsingh3000
Since the “mass” media is slowly deteriorating then how can blogs, social media sites that provide news become “dinosaur proof”? They will have to change with the times and journalist will have to really start investigating their stories rather than write article reviews from other writers.
I still like buying a newspaper from Salt Lake while traveling to Chicago during my down time. The experience of purchasing or reading a newspaper is still something that is hard for me to let go. These days I have a long subscription of magazines, newspapers from all over the world in my Google reader and I enjoy scanning the headlines without the ads annoying my eye sights.
I agree that the business model is failing, just like other business models this entire year;”home mortgages”, “auto industry”, “credit companies”, and the biggest of all the government is having to CHANGE the way it does business.
Dec 7th, 2008
Brook Ellingwood
Here’s the official rundown on cost cutting changes to the Seattle Times content and layout that took place today.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008478496_boardman07.html
We get the Times at my house, but most of what I read from it I read online.
Dec 8th, 2008
hrhmedia
I applaud the Seattle times for its in-depth, showcase reporting. However, when it comes to everyday news (i.e. local), I find it very thin. How could it not be as it continues to lose its experienced staff?
It’s particularly noticeable in Business and Real Estate, which frankly, should be the most local of all sections. Instead, I get nationalized, syndicated headlines, which may or may not be relevant to the Puget Sound market.
If I’m going to pay for my news (and I continue to do so for several newspapers and magazines), I want original reporting. Not an aggregation of syndicated stuff that I can easily get on Google News. That’s just not worth my money.
If local papers must thin down, hopefully they can do so in a way that concentrates the best, local reporting. I’m currently considering a subscription to the Puget Sound Business Journal for that very reason (though I need to take a closer look at it to ensure that it meets my criteria).
Dec 8th, 2008
peterlux
I think the mental leap many newspapers fail to make is that it’s no longer about “news”–that’s a battle they can’t win, except for investigative and original reporting, which has become just a small fraction of the paper. What matters is context and relevance. That’s where the value is.
Besides providing local stories, the Seattle Times also needs to put national news in a local context and help us understand what that news means to us.
Seattle Times does some of that, but it’s mixed with lots of syndicated content that does not produce value. I’d be willing to pay for a thinner paper that gets rid of the non-original stuff off the wires, and instead delivers that local relevance.
Newspapers didn’t use to be run by its owners with the goal of making money. Often they had some wealthy benefactor who published the newspaper as a public service and as a way to secure intellectual reputation.
It may be a model worth revisiting.
Dec 10th, 2008
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