Legacy-Journalism becomes Bloggers Opportunity
Steven R. Berryman
[from The Tentacle April 16th 2012]
Lately it occurred to me that the “blogosphere” is working as planned, allowing for collaborative networking and for the bubbling up of ideas and concepts that can – by design – only come from sources outside of the old world media empire that some know as “mainstream media,” and others know as “legacy-journalism.”
Had I relied on a dalliance with the L.A. Times or CBS’ 60 Minutes for an insightful glimpse of changing journalism, I would have been left out of this conversation and conclusions impacting “news” about journalism’s demise (from the legacy side) and of the ripeness of opportunity, from the blogosphere side. Perspective from within the old grand news and information sources surely cannot report on itself with impartiality!
Highly-paid old guard monopolists from The Washington Post and The New York Times – and their media critics – behave as if they have something to lose; they do. Having few writing slots available in finite papers, for instance, there is little room for joining-in or moving up the ranks by newcomers. Big dollar paying positions are rare.
This has allowed for a concentration of power and influence that used to pay big dividends (sometimes funneled via advertising choices) when political endorsement time rolled around!
One way the media elite’s power is preserved is a function of the intentionally limited space given a page or column of print. This makes inclusion and omission a commodity worth bargaining for.
Agenda driven, partisan talking points make their way into columns for reasons that appear random…to the uninformed.
Related forms of legacy journalism – network news – can use the high-tech edit for similar control of a critical and politically charged news item.
In stories without a direct interest conflict between audience and producer, an inconvenient edit can utterly manipulate content, as in Florida’s drama between television’s NBC, Trayvon Martin, and the Neighborhood Watch. Word continuity does matter. This producer was caught omitting qualification questions by police. Thanks to a check from the lesser-paid media, and his efforts were checked by a termination.
But just imagine what they have not been catching!
Print media makes it even easier to manipulate and concentrate perceptions into a power matrix; again, the choices of omission versus amplification – let alone distortion (aka spin) – is justified by a finite number of pages used to rule, unobstructed...ctd on Link
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