FCC Blames Bloggers For The Decline Of Print Journalism
Jul 17th, 2009 | By James Lewin | Category: Citizen Media, General 
Federal Communications Commission commissioner Michael Copps has circulated an internal report that blames the decline of traditional journalism on blogging and new media.
“We’re not only losing journalists, we may be losing journalism,†according to Copps.
“Some blame the Internet and bloggers, and that’s certainly a part of the story. All that consolidation and mindless deregulation, rather than reviving the news business, condemned us to less real news, less serious political coverage, less diversity of opinion, less minority and female ownership, less investigative journalism and fewer jobs for journalists.â€
The decline of traditional print and broadcast outlets is the primary focus of the report. The report also loks at possible ideas for addressing these “issues”.
“How about journalism?†asked Copps. “Will anyone figure out a business model to support in-depth, investigative journalism – or must we develop something completely new, perhaps based on philanthropy, non-profit models or public media?â€
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Mainstream media being owned by elite super-corporations in bed with politicians has lead to the decline of journalism. There’s a real thirst for unbiased investigative journalism and bloggers are filling that void. It’s a no-brainer. I’m sure the FCC knows this, but in keeping with the mindless propoganda of what passes as news today they simply blame blogging.
The red herring of tying journalism to the fate of newspapers is just that, a red herring.
Newspapers, and their REAL customers, businesses who advertised there, could afford to support journalism because they couldn’t afford NOT to.
Are they blaming bloggers for the decline in revenues of the big media?
The people responsible, ultimately, are the military dunder-heads who thought in 1994/95 that opening up the internet and Tim Berners-Lee’s CERN web thingie to businesses was a good idea. (It got all these techies out of the Military’s hair.)
That enabled all kinds of things ultimately leading to Google and Craig’s List, which wiped out the old, creaky inefficient, ineffective ad revenue model. It also led to companies wanting, and having, their own web sites from which to carry on two way conversations with their customers.
Who the $%^& needs newspapers? (Or radio? Or television?)
The coverage of the internet is now better than that of ANY newspaper’s and businesses can datamine the stats themselves (or create new businesses to do it for them.)
1:N communication models which were characterized traditional media are not dead, but the internet enabled N:M communications are so much more efficient and closer to being what businesses really need.
1:N communications is going to split the old media model along linguistic lines (the only real barrier to communication,) and state and private enterprise/infomercial/philanthropic sponsored broadcasting channels. (Notice that national barriers are absent. They’ll cease to exist in any real sense probably in the next twenty to thirty years, after we cut down the number of national currencies. [Did you thing Zimbabwe’s was the only shaky one?])
N:M communications are so much more efficient that their novelty is sucking all of the air (read dollars,) out of the marketplace.
As businesses get used to them, well see the N:M internet used for all kinds of transaction modalities,
Its inevitable. Its cheaper than the old model and, to businesses, that all that matters. Add to that efficiencies and additional capabilities and any accountant would tell you that NOT going on the web is a form of corporate malfeasance (and criminally liable!)
You may want to proofread this article yourself.
[…] FCC apparently thinks the reason for this downturn is bloggers. “Some blame the Internet and bloggers, and that’s certainly a part of the story,” […]
[…] viability of industry giants and small hometown publications alike. The FCC blames this trend on the rise of blogging and citizen journalists, and many media outlets point a finger at the internet in general as a primary […]