I most certainly hope I'm not repeating a story diaried earlier, but this wasn't exactly front page news. While the WaPo has often shown contempt towards the blogosphere, they've, at least, got another smart one on the payroll outside of Froomkin.
This article of Jay Rosen's was astonishing in its accuracy of nailing down how the net is shaking up the entire medium of journalism and I surely hope WaPo was paying attention. Yes, corporate media, everything you print will be fact-checked and if you're smart, I mean really kick-assed smart, you will embrace what is laid at your feet rather than brush it off with flippancy and derision. We've got the time, a world of information both at our fingertips and from experience on the ground to add the perfect depth to any story that one journalist with deadlines and too full a plate could possibly dig up and even more than that, we've got world coverage.
I can't begin to tell you how high Jay Rosen tossed my confetti when I read these words :
Newspaper, radio, television ... Web! It made sense at the time. But in the 10 years following the birth of washingtonpost.com, the Net and its publishing platform, the World Wide Web, have proved harder to master, scarier to get wrong and more thrilling to get right than expected. Wilder, and discontinuous with the past in a way those coming out of traditional journalism never could have imagined.
Simple example: The Net radically shifts principles of news distribution as all sites become equidistant from the reader.
At this point, I knew the rest of the article was going to be a full-tilt boogey, and not the usual dinosaurial, tip 'o the hat, we-know-you're-out-there-but-shut-up-already-and-let-the-grown-ups-get-on-with-business waltz around the room .
And so it went. Jay started revving up his engines:
It's a long way from "Excuse us, just re-purposing," to, "Oh my God, there's been a power shift." But since 2004, mainstream providers have shown signs of learning to swing with the Web. They supported blogs. They encouraged interactivity. They began to re-draw their picture of their audience.
'Newspaper, radio, television...Web!' was a wrong turn down a one way street. Uh, oh, power shift. In October of 2005, Andrew Heyward, the president of CBS News, said the era of omniscience in network news had ended. His insight: You could improve viewer trust by denying full knowledge. Disruption! (By the way Heyward said it at my blog, PressThink.)
While I think he over-estimates how well corporate media has already embraced the blogosphere and their talkative readership, his acknowledgement of their first baby steps in trying to incoporate us is to be applauded and ultimately he segues nicely into how it did not meet their expectations of how events would unfold, but instead presents a new opportunity.
He continues:
The Net exploded the universe in press criticism. A decade ago, six letters and two phone calls from readers in response to a three-part series that took months to report was considered "good" feedback. Today, a big story commonly brings in 500 to 1,000 e-mails. It's not just the volume, but who is speaking up. Today there is much more criticism of the press from outside the club of mainstream journalists. This changes the kind of explanations that will wash in forums like the Washington Post's live online discussions with reporters, where -- under tightly controlled conditions [emphasis mine] -- journalists reply to skeptical users.
Heavy consumers of online journalism also effectively fact-check, cry foul and push back with weblogs and other tools. That's an environment of critical scrutiny unknown to most journalists pre-1996. Of all things bloggers have tried to do, their criticism of the news media has probably made the biggest difference in the business. [emphasis mine, again]
And with each new paragraph he notched it up:
The Net has exposed group think in journalism. The strongest motivation I had in starting PressThink (my one-person magazine of press criticism) was to circumvent the gatekeepers in the national discussion. I was tired of passing my ideas through editors who forced me to observe the silences they kept as professional journalists.
Well, I could just continue to quote him as it gets better and better, but read the whole thing for yourself. And when you're finished, pat yourselves on the back. We are making a difference. The voices are growing louder. Our cracks in the ice of corporate media are leading to bigger consequences than they ever expected. Let me end this portion of the diary with his final remark:
Exactly: To survive you have to be open. That's where disruption in the news business looks a lot like renewal.
Now, after reading this article, I went and looked up Jay Rosen, and much to my surprise he's been dealing with these issues for some time...who knew? Okay, I'll bet a lot of you guys did, but I didn't. For those not familiar with him, go to
PressThink. Now while I agree with what he is saying there and the broader aspects of the blogosphere or "we media," in regards to what he wrote for the WaPo about corporate media, I would like to offer another terminology over mere disruption. What corporate media needs is
creative destruction. Hey, maybe we could meld the two with "disruptive innovation" which arose from the
disruptive technology of the world-wide web. Aha, you say, so that's why that was in the title!
What wanted to add to his story, and this is even more important than simply noticing that corporate media has undergone a recent awakening to the net and bloggers, is this. The disruption/destruction isn't merely akin to bumps in the road that media needs to adjust their vehicle for. No, this is far more important in that I believe it is what will save and improve mainstream journalism. Upon reading PressThink, it appears that Jay seems to be more concerned with what the blogosphere can do on its own (all of which I absolutely agree with), and if I'm wrong I'm sure any number of your will correct me. However, just as the theory of disruptive innovation goes, sometimes there is a product that is just disruptive enough to appeal to a wider audience better and more completely and with corporate media I believe that is the road they need to travel. Both the blogosphere and corporate media can use each other as overlapping circles.
The walls of corporate media are being torn down but they can and should be rebuilt creating wholly and radically different and much stronger structures. Corporate media needs to realize, sooner rather than later, that we, in actuality, can be the saviors of their business through this process even though the reconstruction will utimately change the business. Creative destruction or disruptive innovation. At a time when many of them still fear us, or marginalize us they do themselves an immense disfavor.
With paper subscriptions on the decline, they are facing the need to improve their bottom line for their investors. The old answers have been cut-backs in staff, and closing down foreign offices, but you don't produce a better and more accurate, well-researched, interesting and enticing intellectual product through tightened deadlines, added workload and less world coverage. If they continue to protect their present concepts of journalism and journalists, and within those there exist certain pockets with the attendant priviledged, social circles enjoyed by the well-paid, celebrity journalists reporting on and sourcing those who are either associates, acquaintances or even friends [resulting in cocktail weenie gossip reporting or even contaminated or agenda-riddled reporting as they feel beholding to certain echelons within] rather than allow a creative destruction or disruptive innovation, they will fall further and further behind and the wider audience will suffer a lack of news substance and real information. They need to embrace this new medium and its inhabitants where all voices are equal, are supported by researched fact, and where the cream rises to the top only by virtue of talent, intelligence and veracity, to ensure themselves of an evolved survival.
The next step for coporate media is to incorporate this cornucopia of wisdom, insight, research, and time that bloggers present them free of charge. Holy crap! No money, and they gain writers not beholding to special interests, editors or bosses, or the cocktail circuit of D.C. This should be a no-brainer. What the blogosphere has to offer is a vast repertoire of people with experience, perspective, education and degrees in varied occupations and disciplines; business, science, justice, military and government AND they can write, to boot. Corporate media should be spending a great deal of their time now culling and cultivating this vast outland for the best, brightest, wittiest and most fact-based writers they can find and they should welcome them aboard to advance the day's stories. Some exquisite voices are not looking for any compensation outside of a bigger stage from which to rhapsodize, scat, riff, shoulder-shimmy, and razzle-dazzle the truth to a larger audience. Some voices simply want to tell the story on the ground where the media doesn't or can't send reporters. Corporate media needs to fully embrace the rock opera out here waiting for them and the audience that's most certainly hungry for its art and interaction.
About a year ago, my (at the time) 17-year old son sent me this flash. At the time I thought "Wow, some of that seems quite possible." In the time since I've first viewed it, much of it has come to pass. One thing is certain, corporate media needs to not only take note and accept us, but do or die.