The Future of News
I saw the future of news media Friday. The leading bloggers have probably seen it coming for a while, but it would look far too self-serving for them to mention it, so I will.
The New York Times cited the weblog Talking Points Memo (TPM) in an editorial
First, a few key definitions. As we learned in Alice in Wonderland, when we choose to use a word, it means exactly what we say it means.
> blog
- Weblog - basically, a web journal
> The Network Effect
- Popularized by the book The Gorilla Game. Basically, the EBay effect--the more sellers go to a site, the more buyers will go there...which in turn causes more sellers to go there, and so on. What's important to realize is that "sellers" can be selling anything--news, Elvis plates, humor, whatever.
> Sturgeon's Law
- 90% of everything is crud. See Eric Raymond, writer of The Cathedral and The Bazaar if you will only believe someone smart.
Yes, I'm going somewhere with all this.
Blogs are the future of news. This sounds like daft CNBC hyperbole, and maybe something will change to make me a liar, but all vectors point that way at the moment.
The first important trend to consider is that large corporations own the media now. Hopefully nobody needs debate this.
The second trend to notice is the decreasing objectivity of the media. Anyone tried to count the number of adverbs and adjectives per 1000 words in major media sources? Please let me know. I"m sure the number is rising. Blogs usually make few claims of objectivity. The major media claim objectivity, but no one seems to believe it any more.
The next important trend is the growth in the number of blogs. If we believe Sturgeon's Law, then the number of good blogs (the other 10%) must be growing, too.
Some sociologist, please tell me the formal name, but I imagine we have all noticed the tendency of little groups to join forces to battle a big group--even if the little groups don't particularly like each other. Bloggers seem to self-organize into groups that do like each other, but they are still little groups fighting against big media corporations. Note the language TPM uses to describe the Associated Press (AP) "Next time the AP rips off a story we broke at 11 AM and runs it as their own story at 5 PM maybe they could toss in a little attribution? I know it's their rep and all but do they have to be so slimy. (sic)"
Now, if the big media are starting to cite blogs, the general public will start to check them too. Then more and more people are going to start checking a few "top" blogs. "Top" blogs being those that get cited most often...because the most people check them. You can probably see the Network Effect parallel I"m drawing here, can't you?
When these top 10 blogs establish themselves, what will remain to separate them from big media? If, as TPM complains, blogs are breaking stories ahead of big media, that won't be the criterion. If nobody trusts NBC to report on GE because GE owns NBC, objectivity won't distinguish big media, so what's left?
An editor.
But the gruff editor with implacable standards you see in 70's newspaper movies is long gone. He's mostly responsible for checking newspaper liability now. So what's an Internet editor look like? I'm guessing he looks like web site hits.
The Internet acts increasingly like the pure laissez-faire capitalism we all heard about in school: the consumers will route around inefficiencies. If any blogger charges too much, writes too little, gets too many facts wrong or offends too often, viewers will stop looking at that blog and move on to the next blog. But can anyone see all blogs going away? (Hint: can anyone see file swapping going away?) So viewers will be, collectively, the editor.
The next likely signs of the road to blog news media:
- Regular newspaper and magazine subscription rates start dropping (am I late in predicting this one?)
- Corporate news media cites blog stories increasingly often--with attribution
- Yahoo or Netscape makes a blog available as a channel on their "My" page
- Some Cursor-style page becomes popular--except it mostly covers blog highlights
and I don't think these events will be long in occurring...
