Death of the Media

It's no secret big news is dying. I wish this was because the media are so obviously biased. (If you don't believe it, here are two examples from this week alone.) Unfortunately, I think their downfall has way more to do with the internet and Craigslist than politics.

Should we lament the downfall of the media or celebrate it? Someone has to do fact gathering and doing it takes time and work. Newspapers used to be able to make money doing this because theere was a serious barrier to entry, namely, you had to have a printing press. Furthermore, there was a good way to tie advertising services to the product, because there was physical copy of the paper. With the internet decoupling the advertising and product, and also removing the barrier to entry, papers are struggling to make a profit. With fewer papers, there are fewer jobs for reports and less investigative reporting.

That's the downside. But on the upside, I'm really glad that we don't have to rely upon the mainstream media's gate-keeping decisions. If we did, it seems we would never know about Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, ACORN, Dan Rather, Van Jones and a host of other important stories. Furthermore, while the incentives to do investigative reporting are down, the costs associated with doing that work are down, too. Specifically, research is much easier with the internet. In fact, many hobbyists do a much better job of looking into the facts of "inconvenient" stories.

The real pluses, however, come on the analysis side. the questions still remains: what do the facts mean? Now anyone can weigh in on that question. A slight reduction in fact gathering, but a large increase in free content, voices, and competition between ideas equals progress in my opinion.