So I agree with basically everything Nicola says below, and I myself have been talking up the interactivity of new media from a PR standpoint for a while. But I’ve never seen any data on this, and I’m beginning to get rather skeptical of many of the premises — I mean, when the phrase “we don’t want politics that sounds like it’s been through a focus group” is as safe and obvious a statement to make as if, well, it had come out of a focus group, then I begin to get leery.
Most problematically, is it really true that traditional media represents “authority telling“? I suspect that this thesis may be the product of coastal elites who, regardless of their ideological affiliation, will always think of the New York Times when they say the words “traditional media.” But even the newspaper has a history of consumer-driven content (most of the suburbs where I grew up in Cincinnati had their own “Community Press” papers with skeletal staffs and content largely provided by local Women’s Clubs and Boy Scout troops). Furthermore, the newspaper’s self-image as an objective voice of Truth was a construction to replace its self-image as an advocate for the Just that the age of yellow journalism had instilled. Apparently it was the right decision then, but in assuming that that is the core of their identity, rather than a strategic choice, they’ve calcified themselves — possibly fatally.
I’m not saying that the Internet isn’t opening up galaxies of possibility that never existed before — that’s pretty obviously true. But when we talk about the incredible interactive power of “new media,” it’s really important to separate those technological advances which are truly unique to This Particular Moment from those latent potentialities on which Old Media deliberately turned their backs when they decided to become the men behind the curtain.
Actually, I was thinking a good deal more about USA Today, the network news, even CNN or MSNBC or Fox. The Times (or the Post, or the Journal) may be the paper of record for coastal elites, but the more important question is where people are getting their news — or, even more, who’s making the story.
The truly groundbreaking thing in “new media” is the responsiveness of our political discourse. If I come up with something really new and clever, I can put it out there and it can spark real debate among the people who matter. New media is more authentically a medium for conversation than old media ever were.
You may have been thinking more about those papers in that particular context, but the Times provides the (assumed or even subconscious) archetype for what we think old media is supposed to do.
And again, I’ll give you that it’s easier to be a content producer under new media, but we really need to recognize that content consumers as content producers is not a phenomenon that’s alien to old media. It’s just alien to the types of old media that we think of as being national — a word that can’t fairly be applied in the same way to any new-media outlet. On that level, the biggest change is that the only responsive media before the advent of the Internet were small-scale and territorial; now, responsive media have been deterritorialized, but still (given that the total possible audience has also expanded hugely) fairly small-scale. Kos reaches more of America than a community newspaper, but Kos doesn’t reach America.
“Most problematically, is it really true that traditional media represents “authority telling“? I suspect that this thesis may be the product of coastal elites who, regardless of their ideological affiliation, will always think of the New York Times when they say the words “traditional media.” But even the newspaper has a history of consumer-driven content (most of the suburbs where I grew up in Cincinnati had their own “Community Press” papers with skeletal staffs and content largely provided by local Women’s Clubs and Boy Scout troops).”
…is there anything more authoritarian than community? Newspaper-as-community-voice is even more oppressive than the NYT. It’s the PTA and the Den Mothers and those people you’re supposed to make small talk with at the foot of your driveway reinforcing standards of behavior and expectation in another outlet.
The cool thing about the blogosphere is that we’re separated from lifestyle- we’re kind of free-floating in an idea lagoon. We aren’t beholden to reputation or expectation in the same way; we have greater freedom.
Oh, come on. There’s a huge difference between the univocal community (which is authoritarian, sure) and the multivocal community (a particular Scout troop or antique show putting its article into the paper).