[Mb-civic] New media and how newspapers are responding...From "Buzz Flash.com"

[Hawaiipolo at cs.com]

    Opinion Columnist
Richard Schneider is The Jackson Sun's executive editor. He can be reached at 
(731) 425-9654 or toll-free outside Madison County at (800) 372-3922, ext. 
654. Log onto talkback.jacksonsun.com and share your thoughts on this column. 

New media gives readers almost anything they want

Rush Limbaugh helped me write today's column.

        
While listening to Rush last week, I found elements of his show that dealt 
with our topic, the changing face of an old friend, the ink-on-print newspaper. 

Last Sunday, we talked about changes in the newspaper business. I said the 
changes are a result of a "perfect storm" of technology, changing reader 
demographics, a decline in civic involvement and the rise of an increasingly partisan 
society that uses media not to become informed, but to affirm. Since last 
week's column, you might have read that circulation of daily newspapers has 
dropped 2.6 percent. You also might have read that the largest shareholder of 
Knight-Ridder stock believes the nation's second-largest newspaper company should 
sell out because advertising is going to the Internet, and not to ink-on-print.

Which brings us back to Rush.

He now calls his show the "crown jewel of new media." I found that 
interesting, since radio is about as "old" media as you can get. Nor is his talk radio 
format new. Talk radio stations have grown faster than kudzu since the early 
1970s, when stations with a music format fled AM for FM, leaving AM radio to the 
chatterboxes. I grew up listening to talk radio in the late 1960s and early 
1970s, Philadelphia's WCAU-AM.

But while the hosts of that era might argue with a caller, rarely would they 
be as unabashedly partisan as Rush. Rarely, if ever, would they question the 
journalistic motivation of the dominant media in the community.

Boy, that's sure changed.

 On the day I listened to Rush, he talked about the "mainstream media's" 
desire to give liberal sainthood to anti-war mom Cindy Sheehan, the better to help 
topple George W. Bush. The same was true, Rush said, for their attempted 
deification of others, including Valerie Plame Wilson's husband, Joe.

 (By the way, the first site on Google when you search for "Valerie Plame" is 
the "Wikipedia" site, an online encyclopedia that gives you current 
information about the Plame story and so much more information. The first site when you 
search for "Cindy Sheehan" is a site called "BuzzFlash," which seems to skew 
liberal and has what appears to be an ad for Al Franken at the top of the 
page. So, if a student is looking for information on Valerie Plame Wilson or Cindy 
Sheehan, his or her first online offering might not be a traditional news 
site. Welcome to the new media world.)

Partisan media is hardly new. Most American newspapers, until recent times, 
were just as partisan as Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. The Chicago Tribune was 
(and to a degree still is) a strongly Republican newspaper, one that stood out 
for being virulently anti-New Deal and anti-FDR. The current nameplates of so 
many newspapers show their partisan history: The "Tallahassee Democrat," is an 
example, and some in the community will forever call it the "Dixiecrat." The 
ancestor of this newspaper was the "West Tennessee Whig," I assume for its 
support of the Whig Party.

There are four dynamics that make today's partisan media very different from 
when newspapers took obvious sides:




 First, people today have literally an infinite amount of media choices. If 
the politically partisan were just on radio, or there was just one network on 
television, the impact on newspapers would not be so bad. But news consumers 
have splintered into hundreds of directions. They can find not only Rush, but 
also hundreds of bloggers who echo their views. They can go to hundreds of Web 
sites that are filled with news content that is in sync with the consumer's 
politics (it's called "seeking symmetry").It should be noted that many young news 
consumers do not cite the networks or newspapers as their primary source of 
news, nor even Internet sites.

They watch "The Daily Show."

It's highly opinionated. It's very much an entertainment show.

But it has become very, very powerful.

(Last week, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama told "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, "The 
only person more overhyped than me is you.")

Perhaps even more important is that one no longer needs a printing press or 
an FCC license to become a part of media.




 Second, when newspapers were involved in some glorious partisan fights, the 
audience was a passive observer. Today, a state legislator can call a 
Nashville talk show, announce "We need more troops" to block a state income tax vote, 
and hundreds, if not more, of listeners will respond within an hour and march 
in Nashville.This new-media audience is somewhat of a contradiction since it 
is both passive and active. A person can be driving and listening to talk 
radio, a passive act, but become active in a way a newspaper reader never could by 
picking up a cell phone and calling the show.

In a dark version of this, we learned last week that organizers of the French 
riots are using Web sites and text messaging on cell phones to coordinate 
violence.




 Third, newspapers grossly underestimated both the power and the allure of 
such "new media," media that has rejected the traditional journalistic code of 
detachment and became involved.


Finally, I believe the transient nature of our society is the rocket fuel for 
the new partisan media. Once, politics were debated in union halls, fire 
stations, across the fence and on the porch. But there always was the foundation 
of community. You might argue with your neighbor, but you knew them.Now, we put 
walls around communities. Once, children needed only an address to find a 
friend's house. Now, they need the gate code.

The talk show radio host, the blogger and those who participate on online 
forums have replaced that neighbor.

And best of all, you don't have to give a name, show your face or even have 
your facts right.

The veil of the new partisan media is intoxicating.

 In the coming weeks, we'll talk about how newspapers have finally responded 
to this and if that response is too little, too late.

Newspapers badly misjudged the rise of new partisan media, and that has cost 
us readers and, to use a modern phrase, "street credibility."

Next week, we'll talk about the changing demographics of the newspaper 
audience.

 Richard Schneider is The Jackson Sun's executive editor. He can be reached 
at 425-9654 or toll-free outside Madison County at (800) 372-3922, ext. 654. 
Log onto talkback.jacksonsun.com and share your thoughts on this column.

 





Originally published November 13, 2005

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        Opinion Columnist
Richard Schneider is The Jackson Sun's executive editor. He can be reached at 
(731) 425-9654 or toll-free outside Madison County at (800) 372-3922, ext. 
654. Log onto talkback.jacksonsun.com and share your thoughts on this column. 
    
    
    
    


    
    
    
    
    
        
        
        
        
    
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