Having followed the political blogosphere for 5 years, and the Internet medium for 25, I really expected that by this point the media would be more integrated than it is.
After all, the Internet Generation is now grown. My two kids can’t remember a time before the Internet. They have had broadband access in their rooms since she was 10 and he was 7. Today he never watches TV, and her TV-watching is usually accompanied by the clicking of her keyboard.
The Internet is not just integrated into their lives. It is their lives. It is the medium of their lives.
Their reality is also the reality for tens of millions of others. Not just old fogies like me. I grew up with TV and, while I now work exclusively online I’m more like a 1950s sitcom writer, translating the vocabulary of what I know into where I am.
So you would expect that, by this time, the old medium would have a fine-grained understanding of the new, and be able to bring the best of it along into the new age.
Nope. Not at all.
This is very much on display during the current political
conventions. It’s as though the TV medium seems, literally, threatened
by bloggers. Rather than granting air-time to the most popular bloggers
among Democrats — people like Atrios, Digby, Jane Hamsher, even Jesus’ General — they created an alternate reality.
CNN has what it calls a "bloggers’ panel." It consists of a
"Republican strategist" employed by CNN, a former Max Cleland worker
now running a blog with fewer readers than this, and a Rudy Giuliani
strategist who claims to be "independent" for "balance." All three are
spending the week, in nice suits-and-ties, concern trolling like mad.
Actually, concern trolling like every other set of "analysts" and
"strategists" the networks have imported from Washington, adding
absolutely nothing to our understanding of the event or its background.
I should add there’s an exception which proves the rule. Every once
in a while we have a brief Markos Moulitsas sighting. The problem, as
I’ve noted here many times, is that Kos is not a blogger. He runs a
community, a rather substantial one. He blogs, but it’s more in the
style of a publisher’s note. He runs trade shows, he has a company
which specializes in online communities. It’s like interviewing Jeff
Zucker as though he were Brian Williams. Kos is a publisher. He isn’t,
and doesn’t want to be, the "talent." He’s the money.
Maybe this is to be expected. TV had a lot in common with radio and
what came before it (vaudeville). Newspapering developed organically,
as a business (and claimed profession) that had never existed before.
The development of American newspapers from the 1850s through the 1890s started
with bookwriters, then created the first media stars, and finally developed great entrepreneurs who turned this ragtag business into an industry.
Of course, this new industry is replacing, has replaced, is in the
process of replacing (take your pick) that newspaper industry. It is
also in the process of replacing many other industries — TV,
retailing, travel, education, etc. etc. In some ways it may be a
stretch to expect the old media, the people going out history’s door,
to embrace or even understand what is replacing them.
Instead they think they’re embracing and extending the blogosphere.
Most newspaper and magazine reporters today are bloggers. That is, if
you have a beat, a defined beat, you are given a blog and told to write
whenever anything happens. Which you do. And the industry thinks that,
by doing this, it has replaced the Internet, with no need for those who
have developed their own voices for this new medium.
Which is nonsense.
Defying the future, denying the future, and concern trolling don’t
serve the audience. They don’t serve TV’s audience, and they don’t
serve the new audiences developing in this medium. They don’t serve my
kids, and serving kids used to be how TV grew, how it thrived. The medium has
cut off its nose to spite its face.
See you online.
This is just typical corporate behavior. Remember: Western Union spurned the telephone back when they had the money and infrastructure to be the dominant player. AT&T never whole-heartedly embraced wireless and that was a big reason that it was surpassed by the likes of SBC and Verizon. GM and Ford refused to take a little short term pain and get away from giant gas-guzzlers when the getting was good — twice! Companies like Rite-Aid and Starbucks expand and expand, never paying attention to the fact that the never stores are hurting the bottom line until it is far too late. Corporations are run by people and people in general are quite averse to change, even when it is obviously necessary.
This is just typical corporate behavior. Remember: Western Union spurned the telephone back when they had the money and infrastructure to be the dominant player. AT&T never whole-heartedly embraced wireless and that was a big reason that it was surpassed by the likes of SBC and Verizon. GM and Ford refused to take a little short term pain and get away from giant gas-guzzlers when the getting was good — twice! Companies like Rite-Aid and Starbucks expand and expand, never paying attention to the fact that the never stores are hurting the bottom line until it is far too late. Corporations are run by people and people in general are quite averse to change, even when it is obviously necessary.