There will soon be a major battle between the MSM and the Internet!

[trumad]

It's coming...we're encroaching on their territory with great speed and they have no idea how to react. Oh they're trying with their lame little comments about sites like DU and blogs like Kos, but they can't stop the inevitable. The day of the MSM is quickly coming to an end and me-thinks they won't go quietly.

[candice]

1. They can't seem to cover important issues. How much time and newsprint

do we need on Scott Peterson? Compare that to the attention paid to the way this election was conducted.

[janx]

2. The media have been trying to keep the internet watching

television for years. That's why they have web pages and ridiculous "questions of the day"; that's why they have internet "polls."

[liberal N proud]

3. The Internet has already wone in my score book

I do everything to stay off the MSM.
IT is great here, we can read multiple news sources on the same news story in less time than reading multiple news papers of staying glued to CNN.
Reading multiple sources allows one to deermine the truth for themselves and leaves the opinions out of it for the most part.
Unless all you are reading is the OP-ED articles.

[mike_c]

4. this is somewhat unlikely...

...although a rearrangement of the relationship between the MSM and internet news/discussion sites is likely inevitable. Consider, however, that most of the information reported on the internet-- as opposed to commentary about that information or interpretation of events-- originates in the MSM in one form or another. The major difference is that discussion forums and blogs integrate information far more widely than most local media do, so internet users have access to a greater variety of sources than average cable TV viewers or newspaper readers, for example, but nonetheless the primary source of the fundamental reporting is usually a MSM journalist somewhere.

Blogs and discussion forums like DU don't pay small armies of journalists to roam the world looking for stories. The MSM does. If you're correct and the "day of the MSM comes to an end" then the internet news and commentary sites will dry up with them.

Instead, the internet can hold the MSM's feet to the fire when it comes to objective reporting of the whole story. That's where I see the conflict between the MSM and the internet heading. But until folks like KOS begin hiring journalists, or paying freelancers, the internet will remain a carbuncle on the ass of the MSM-- at best an alternative voice-- rather than a replacement for it.

[bo44]

8. I agree totally

The msm does not want to change in the face of the pressure that the 'nets apply to them. So instead of responding to the audience and making adjustments, they want to destroy the audience. If they can succeed in wiping out the 'nets credibility they can hold off the migration of new and disgusted truthseekers from their piece of shit product.

[hunter]

12. Your "small army of journalists" is shrinking and streched very thin.

I believe the "MSM" will fragment. It will be harder and harder to define the exact line between "bloggers" and journalists.

You tell me (drawn up from my own sometimes grim experiences...) what is the difference between Bev Harris appearing in MSM publications such as "Time" or "Vanity Fair," and her writing here at DU?

The days that institutions like the New York Times or CBS or the BBC could sanction some semi-official and generally agreed upon version of the "News" are over. To bring those days back governments would have to kill the internet.

[mike_c]

18. the point is that the MSM pays its reporters and correspondants....

That's how they make a living. Until someone begins paying them to blog, they only provide most of the news that the internet community picks up because the MSM keeps them employed doing it. Internet news sites are deeply dependent on the MSM-- even IndyMedia and NarcoNews correspondants have to earn a living.

[jdj]

20. good point. but half the time we do their work for them

we find the tid-bits and connect the dot and send then in.

I am tired of "media figures", I say, no more anchorbots.

I want to see me some ugly people, some fat people, some old people, and NO BLONDES ALLOWED. In fact, lets just say no facelifts and no one with hair dye at all.

If it's pleasing to the eyes to that degrees it's seduction, and if it's seduction it's motivated by marketing and not news.

[bpilgrim]

21. and thats another reason why they HATE us

and the more folks who come here to get the analysis the more power we have on shaping public opinion.

there has NEVER been such an AWESOME power of aggregation before that i am more informed than everyone i know and i don't watch teeVee news nor read any hardcopy newspapers.

thats our differentiator and it IS kicking there a$$ since they have NO value add to give like the blogs do :evilgrin:

thank GORE he 'INVENTED' the INTERNETs :bounce:

peace

[hunter]

23. My mom used to have her own radio show on a small market station.

That station had one full time news person, and a couple of part-timers on call. There were also "disc jockeys" who were actually sitting there at the turntables, and you could call them if there was some local disaster and they could quickly get someone to cover the breaking news story.

Those sorts of radio stations are practically extinct in the United States. My mom is retired, and now writes for a small local paper. Do they pay her? No, not really. Most small town newspapers are like that.

I had some journalism experience when I graduated from college in the 'eighties, and granted, my writing is not exceptional (especially here on DU where I'm pretty lazy and careless) but when I compared work in journalism to work in medical labs, there really was no comparison. I could get a fairly pleasant job as a medical lab assistant and make twice as much as I could busting my ass in some small newsroom.

The "MSM" as it exists is dying and here's why: A web page costs far, far less to produce and distribute than any newspaper or magazine capturing a similar number of eyeballs. I remember I used to subscribe to a lot of amateur newsletters. Even newsletters cut-and-pasted together on someone's kitchen table and reproduced at Kinko's cost something like fifty cents each to distribute, not counting labor.
All of them are gone, many of them transformed from dead paper into living real-time words on the internet.

The quality of "MSM" is declining. Coverage here in the United States of the Tsunami, or the war in Iraq, sucks. It seems our vaunted news "industry" has maybe a dozen newspeople working in either place, and they seem to all travel around in fearful little packs. Everyone -- from fox, to cnn, to cbs, to nbc, to pbs -- they all have the same pictures and stories from the same places. The war in Iraq is huge. The Tsunami is huge. You would think that all the different "media" would carry different stories from differnet perspectives.

Instead I see yet another picture of some lost little white kid on CNN and listen to Larry King say things like "what a pretty boy..." and every damned American media outlet is like that, followed by advertisements for drugs that make my dick hard and my days less stressful.

Who will pay the journalists? If this is the sort of "journalism" we get for our money, who the bloody hell cares? Let the U.S. news industry die.

[NashVegas]

5. "The Democratization of Information"

The internet's openness, if we are prepared to fight to preserve it, will perhaps be the best lasting legacy of the Clinton / Gore administration, albeit probably unheralded.

What disturbs the mainstream about this stuff is they begin to lose their lock on presenting the public reality. The media and others lose control of the law, "history is written by the victors." That's the single most threatening thing about the internet.

Gotta love it.

[Eloriel]

14. More re Democratization of Information

I was very taken with the ideas presented in this thread:

Here is a journalist who gets it!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2907721#2907984

[VioletLake]

19. Think about what it'll mean to historians...

to have such a detailed historical record to work with.

Edit: rewrote sentence. Good night. :)

[yardwork]

6. A big battle? You mean like men and elves vs. orcs and sauron?

Well, ok, as long as Faramir is on my side.

[Blue Gardener]

7. They brought it on themselves

If I could trust the MSM to give me the news as it happens, and not the way the White House thinks it should be reported, then I would still be watching them. They have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted to report accurately, so the hell with them. I'll get my news from DU or Buzzflash.

[matt819]

9. 2 pm press conference

By my reckoning, that was just about 6 hours ago. Nothing on cnn.com. Nothing on nytimes.com. Nothing on washingtonpost.com.

[Wapsie B]

10. How will MSM fight back?

It sure as hell won't be by giving us more hard-hitting news.

We want happy-talk damnit! Mindless chatter between airbrushed bimbos. /sarcasm

[spanone]

11. The Rethugs will eventually censor the internet. Free speech is dangerous.

[not fooled]

15. agree...

...the question is what will they try? I suspect consolidation of access into the hands of the media giants, followed by gate-keeping of access.

[hunter]

13. A related post:

It's about what the future of news media might be:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2907721

[lectrobyte]

16. it's been battling a while now, and the internet has won. I know I

spend more time pursuing news on the internet than I do watching any TV news. Probably for the last year or two, as well. And I'd call myself a news junkie.

[number6]

17. and the Internet will kick MSM ass !

..

[Beam Me Up]

22. MSM = IOL (Increasingly Obvious LIES) n/t

[Taxloss]

24. What, the Google Grid?

How Googlezon will redefine communications? Not to mention EPIC.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, have a peek at this:

http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/

A bit of speculation about the next 10 years.

[SoCalDem]

25. reporters are a bit redundant already.. People INSIDE organizations

can (and often DO) report on the goings on inside their business...People travel all over the world, and most of them know what's going on (more than do the reporters who are paid to "cover" events).

ANYONE can be a reporter.. Attend an event, go to the web, and tell about it. If enough people are interested, and know where to "find" you, you ARE a reporter.. Granted...an unpaid one, but if the goal is to get the story out, people will do it..pay or no pay..

The MSM "knows" this, and they are afraid because digital photography SHOWS us what's happening, in real-time, and people who are THERE, on the spot, are writing about events.. The MSM does not have the luxury of TIME to sugarcoat or bury a story..