Here’s some analysis that resonates keenly. It says that mainstream media is irrelevant. You can read the whole article here: Why the News Media Became Irrelevant—And How Social Media Can Help
What follows are five selected and dis-contiguous paragraphs from the article.
But things started to change well before the Web became popular. Over the past few decades, news conglomerates took over local papers and stations. Then they cut on-the-ground reporters, included more syndicated content from news services, and focused local coverage on storms, fires, crashes and crime to pad profit margins. The news became less local and less relevant, and reporters became less connected to their communities. Surveys show a steep drop in public trust in journalism occurring during the past 25 years.
The truth is the Internet didn’t steal the audience. We lost it. Today fewer people are systematically reading our papers and tuning into our news programs for a simple reason—many people don’t feel we serve them anymore. We are, literally, out of touch.
Trust is key. Many younger people don’t look for news anymore because it comes to them. They simply assume their network of friends—those they trust—will tell them when something interesting or important happens and send them whatever their friends deem to be trustworthy sources, from articles, blogs, podcasts, Twitter feeds, or videos.
Mainstream media see social media as tools to help them distribute and market their content. Only the savviest of journalists are using the networks for the real value they provide in today’s culture—as ways to establish relationships and listen to others. The bright news organizations and journalists spend as much time listening on Twitter as they do tweeting.
The problem with mainstream media isn’t that we’ve lost our business model. We’ve lost our value. We are not as important to the lives of our audience as we once were. Social media are the route back to a connection with the audience. And if we use them to listen, we’ll learn how we can add value in the new culture.
There’s a lot of residual cachet left with the mainstream media brands – every time I go to Ezra’s blog at the Washington Post I think this. But in terms of finding information or making one’s mind up, who cares for brand names anymore? Since everything is now suspect, one has to develop new trust.
This piece I bookmarked spells it out quite nicely, it’s everything we’ve been saying about social media for years. My caveat even with this is that our trust is held rather more temporarily nowadays – the premiums on true knowledge are so high that one can’t afford to be fooled too often.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 0 comments… add one now }