Link: Journalism.org- The State of the News Media 2007.
(((Or: "watch mainstream media go utterly broke in public.")))
"Blogging is on the brink of a new phase that will probably include scandal, profitability for some, and a splintering into elites and non-elites over standards and ethics. The use of blogs by political campaigns in the mid-term elections of 2006 is already intensifying in the approach to the presidential election of 2008. Corporate public-relations efforts are beginning to use blogs as well, often covertly.
" What gives blogging its authenticity and momentum — its open access — also makes it vulnerable to being used and manipulated. At the same time, some of the most popular bloggers are already becoming businesses or being assimilated by establishment media. All this is likely to cause blogging to lose some of its patina as citizen media. (((If it ever had any))).
"To protect themselves, some of the best-known bloggers are already forming associations, with ethics codes, standards of conduct and more. The paradox of professionalizing the medium to preserve its integrity as an independent citizen platform is the start of a complicated new era in the evolution of the blogosphere.
"What we found was that the root media no longer strictly define a site’s character. ((("We no longer have roots – we have aerials."))) The Web sites of the
Washington Post and the New York Times, for instance, are more dissimilar than the papers are in print. The Post, by our count, was beginning to have more in common with some sites from other media. The field is still highly experimental, with an array of options, but it can be hard to discern what one site offers, in contrast to another.... (((I'm reading this amazingly grim executive summary and trying to imagine a world where "news" *goes away.* There's nothing left of "news," for the Fourth Estate has ceased to exist because no one watches it and no one pays for it. There's just a searchable online soup of personal remarks, corporate public relations, and partisan propaganda, with, maybe, some video of rich guys chattering together at biz and tech conferences, and the occasional tattered web of not-for-profit activist NGOs attempting to act like citizens while they try to rake up and spread muck.... I dunno... could a society that spectactularly splintered and ignorant even survive? I guess we're about to find out.)))
