It’s always amusing to watch Netroot bloggers fulminate and rend their garments over the right-wing bias of TeeVee and print journalists. (To the right is Howard Kurtz, symbol of this new age. Married to a right-wing hack, he dares sit as judge of everyone else’s work.)
It’s not because the bloggers are wrong. They’re right. The vast majority of people who are given TeeVee speaking time or favored print positions are supporters of this war, endorsers of this President, and supporters of Sen. McCain.
But the Netroots is forgetting The Golden Rule:
He who has the gold makes the rules.
For 40 years conservatives based their myths and values on the idea of a "liberal media conspiracy" which was dieing the moment they spoke the words. Today we have two types of TeeVee and newspaper owners:
- People like Rupert Murdoch, Pat Robertson and Sun Myung-Moon who run their properties as propaganda organs, and
- Media conglomerates that have benefited enormously from the Bush-inspired consolidation of the last 8 years and have sent the word down that questioning the status-quo is risky.
You can say all you want about professions like politics, or the law, or big business. But in no profession is the idea of BOGU (bend over grease up) such a key to success as journalism.
How do you become a news anchor? How do you become a newspaper columnist?
You do it by climbing a corporate hierarchy.
Despite the meritocratic pretensions of the so-called profession, quality means a lot less in the search for modern "journalistic leadership" than a willingness to reflect what management wants said, and to ape that shamelessly.
The War in Iraq merely emphasized existing trends. Every single
major media company favored this war. In the last six years few have
made any motion to de-couple from that support, and by "making a
motion" I mean allowing a few "lefty" critics to be heard.
If 2002 was the height of this modern-era McCarthyism, we’re only at
about 1957 on that clock. In 1957 it was still a mark of courage to
allow black-listed writers like Dalton Trumbo to work. Kirk Douglas
still draws plaudits for putting Trumbo’s real name on his Spartacus. The Dixie Chicks (left) have a fraction of the career they had before speaking out.
Despite the fact that large majorities now recognize that Iraq was a
mistake, that we must get out, and that the Bush economy has been a
disaster, the opposite is the case for the major media. You can count
the number of columnists or anchors who regularly speak out for where
the majority stands on a few hands. The media is completely out of step
with public opinion.
This is the market opportunity the Netroots is now taking advantage
of. But because most don’t recognize it as a market opportunity (most
see it as a political struggle) most are doing a poor job of seizing it.
You could see this plainly at Netroots Nation, originally called
YearlyKos, which was in Austin over the weekend. The "blogosphere" has
generated a few "stars," people like Atrios, Digby, Jane Hamsher,
Arianna Huffington, and Kos himself. Only Kos has made a move toward
really taking advantage of that, not just with the conference but with a
structure which is open to all writers, and which sometimes highlights
newcomers, allowing them to refresh and renew the hierarchy.
Huffington, by contrast, has become nothing but an elitist echo
chamber, a virtual caricature of every right-wing criticism of
liberalism. She’s far more interested in her own star, and cuddling up
to other stars, than in really taking advantage of either the political
or business opportunities before her. She is, in other words, a dilettante. What she is building is no more stable than the current
political alignment, which I guarantee will change (as it always does).
The so-called major media is barely covering the story. A few, like the National Journal’s Blogometer,
have made minor attempts to understand. But all they’ve really done is
create two hierarchies of coverage, one on the left and one on the
right, morally equivalent, equally calcified.
That’s not how blogging works or should work. If top blogs continue
to pull up the ladder of success behind them they will lose the
business opportunity. Because Americans no longer believe what they see
on TeeVee or read in their daily newspapers or weekly magazines there
is an enormous opportunity to build a new media, with its roots sunk
deep into local soil, and with business models which enable anyone to
start from nothing and make something of themselves.
This is the real task before the Netroots. The old media is dead.
You are the new media. The time has come to build new businesses, now,
before someone else does.
Are they up to it?
From here the answer seems to be no.
It will take a new type of entrepreneur to find, to tease out, and
to pursue this opportunity. It will be online publishers without a
political agenda, or a social agenda, but with their eyes on the main
chance, which is a profit. Sites like ZDNet have proven that new
business models exist, and just need tweaking to deliver what the
market wants.
Who will be our next Pulitzer, Hearst, Medill (above) Sarnoff? The way is clear. The opportunity is there.
Will it be you?
