d Blog

Welcome to d blog, also known as Dan's rant. The content herein is essentially comprised of miscellaneous ramblings and random thoughts on the nature of contemporary existence.

"Time is on our side – or not"

Record Companies and Movie studios have great trepidation when it comes to the new digital pathways encircling their markets. Newspaper publishers live in fear for their very existence. Broadcast TV Networks fear the dilution of their audience through media fragmentation and the inevitability of IPTV. Radio Broadcasters fear Internet and satellite radio. All these fears are reality based and certainly can be characterized as justifiable paranoia.

When viewed through a historical lens future pundits looking back on these tumultuous and uncomfortable days will describe them variously as the 3 decade debacle of the Bush/Clinton Dynasty, Bush's Folly, The Dawn of The internet, the Second Depression or some other as yet unspoken moniker.

God only knows how they will describe the deplorable response of the music publishing industry to digital media or the bad decisions by other captains of Industry. Ted Turner knew a bad deal when he saw one. They Golden Parachuted him for it.

As the analysts of the future continue to pontificate on the launch of cyberspace as an evolutionary period of transition for the news gathering enterprise and print newspaper operations, it will inevitably appear as some blink of an eye time of change rather than the inexorably slow process of job and career loss and forced adaptation that is occurring as I write this.

Starting well after the Big Bang as the internet developed why oh why did organizations such as the Time Warner Turner conglomerate not leverage their wonderful brands online? All those wonderful magazine brands from Time and Fortune to Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly. How did they ever arrive at the point where AOL could buy them? Why didn’t the newspaper consortium buy Craig’s List when they had the chance? Are these people too afraid to speak truth to power? Is it putting your job on the line to say the emperor has no clothes?

I suppose that these missteps occurred for the same reasons that the Luddites at IBM dealt with Bill Gates as if he were a minor player. Then he ate their lunch. Then Craig’s list ate the Newspaper publishers lunch. As you may know Newspapers have historically paid for their journalistic enterprise through ad sales and in particular classified ads.

Which brings us to the really big question, what is the future of real investigative journalism? What of the news? Don’t hand me that stuff about Blogs and Bloggers, Blogging for the most part is an enormous echo chamber, with bloggers riffing off a root, a single story idea usually having been developed by a paid, professional journalist. Blogs are usually commentary not reporting.

It’s not just print media mind you The dilution of Broadcast journalism by Cable and Internet venues has resulted in decreased budgets. Want Proof? Count the satellite trucks following the candidates! How many are following McCain?

Jobs in Journalism are declining and there is an obvious paradigm shift in the quality of reportage that we are consuming. Factors such as the ascendancy in importance of advertising over content is driven by increased audience fragmentation which in turn results in layoffs in the newsroom. A domestic environment where the Bush administration has won the effort to keep The Fifth Estate in Check. Not until recently has our democratic government operated in such an opaque manner. Not in recent memory have news organizations accepted verbatim such scraps as the administration was want to provide. Accepted gratefully is closer to the truth. The esteem in which society holds journalists and journalistic managers such as editors is at an all time low.

A century ago Newspaper publishers and editors were in the same league as statesmen. Certainly management's cost cutting response of having those that make the cut do more in less time is having a noticeable effect. Journalists now must compete with bloggers like Brian Lam, the editor of Gizmodo. Who is known to pull all-nighters trying to keep his technology oriented site organized and competitive. He said he was well equipped for the torture; he used to be a Thai-style boxer. “I’ve got a background getting punched in the face,” he said. “That’s why I’m good at this job.” Mr. Lam said he has worried his blogging staff might be burning out, and he urges them to take breaks, even vacations. But he said they face tremendous pressure — external, internal and financial. He said the evolution of the “pay-per-click” economy has put the emphasis on reader traffic and financial return, not journalism.

Certainly there are another 1001 dynamics that affect the product as well as the pathways to consumption. Is there always a difference between the product and how we get it? If we didn't remember the product from yesteryear would we be as critical of todays product?

How will we have an informed society going forward? I’m not sure but I suspect that the internet has already begun to provide the answer. It is still a bit of a catch as catch can process and you have to dig for it but it’s there. Small privately funded sites have sprung up serving a nascent constituency. More are needed. More revenues and more funding means more power to resist the inequitable and inevitable onslaughts of those in power to limit points of view.
More citizen participation will be required going forward. No longer can we count on the presence or veracity of the six o’clock news. However, looking at the images coming out of Tibet despite the Chinese Governments censorship gives me pause and gives me hope.


Lotsa Links at www.Linkatopia.com
related support;
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/business/media/07zell.html

http://www.helium.com/items/414778-could-newspaper-depth-article


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/technology/06sweat.html?
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News Tweets This week;

Jesse Ventura was all over tarry King (You Tube) besmirching the Bush/Cheney gang as Lying ChickenHawks who embarrass America.
Way to go Jesse !

It seemed to me that Bush was trying to Piss Putin off what with all his talk of allowing The Ukraine et al into NATO. Put our dope back in his cage will ya!!!

Shades of Minority Report, Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy, tells Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes, the U.S. attack on Iraq was "anticipatory self-defense;" not about 9/11 retaliation

China to The rescue;

(CBS) Over the winter, as Wall Street was losing tens of billions of dollars due to the mortgage and credit crises, it wasn’t the Fed or Congress that came to the rescue. It was something called sovereign-wealth funds -- pools of money controlled by foreign governments.

Inside Beijing's China Investment Corporation Headquarters, where 180 employees are looking for companies to invest in in the West. "How much do you have to invest?" Leslie Stahl asked the fund’s president, Gao Xiqing. "$200 billion," Gao replied.
Last year Gao decided to pour some of those billions into investment houses on Wall Street......
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/04/60minutes/main3993933.shtml

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