On The State of Media: 2008

What follows is the first in a series of attempts to transcribe in, real time, the institutions that dominate civil (and uncivil) society in the United States, in the first half of 2008. The breeze of history, it seems, has begun to stir again, as one political and social front displaces another, and so the recording must begin in earnest.


"2008 wants open-source art."


A bold statement, perhaps. And yet despite the high-minded academic attitude those of us who grew up before the internet was an afterthought (the "I still like a real newspaper" crew), in 2008 the printed word is becoming obsolete. The newspaper business, once in the most powerful position in private-sector American, is on the ropes, choking to death on slack circulation, decreasing readership, and lackluster advertising revenue. In 2008, as private liquidity deteriorates, many of the major conglomerates will find it increasingly hard to prosper in a rapidly changing market. The current stirrings at CBS, the recent News Corp. takeover, and the long-standing massacre of local radio will all continue to suffer as time marches by. You can bank on it, because everyone under the age of 15 is already better at the internet than you. You probably didn't even know it was a competition.

2008 wants open source art. Imagine what 2018 might want! To even describe the state of the media reveals how much it has changed; we must begin by redefining the term itself. No longer the static, printed, painted word; media has become an inclusive, organic, dynamic word. Media now lives up to its broadest sense: "the production of intellectual capital," or "the tangible expression of thought or feeling," or maybe even "the cultivation of human impulse." Those are now the only rules. Newspapers, magazines, television - are trying to adjust to this shift in audience personality, and trying hard. Live commenting on online editions, featured blogs like NYTimes' DotEarth and The Lede , and mini-slide show integration are only a few of the examples. These techniques are useful and entertaining, and provide excellent information. Most of them are simple and appear cleanly on the page providing ease-of-operation and a continuous aesthetic. But their success is also their failure. It's not as though readership has demanded more information from the newspaper because they can't find it themselves; in fact, the attitude is reversed. Readers demand information because they already have it. In other words, the NY Times finds itself competing with every local blogger on the internet - and with the exception of precious few stories, rarely reporting information the little guy can't.

What's more, the blogosphere and other new media outlets like YouTube, Flikr, and even Facebook now provide instant access to a thousand perspectives, not just a single account. Unlike the 20th century, 2008 has taken back the monopoly on truth. The claim to be made for newspapers, radio, and to a lesser extent, broadcast television, is that they still bear the burden of reporting only the News, capital N - that professional, unbiased, objective reporting we love to think of as a true American icon. 2008 has said both "good night" and "good luck" to that sort of thing, and instead of a single boiled down truth Americans are choosing the human mosaic instead, a digital rendering of our cultural promiscuity splattered across the internet. In the world of webcams, video phones, and the ubiquitous blog, the universality of the newspaper, once its claim to fame, becomes conformity in the minds of a multi-media, user-driven generation.

We have 3G cell phones, full featured iPhones, and a new Google interface that is likely to shift the mobile information market another 90 degrees or so. We have bandwidth auctions, the conversion to all-digital broadcast, and the are on the cusp of blanket wireless internet access. In twenty years, it is likely that every kid in the world will have instant, handheld access to the exact same information at the exact same time. Globalization has its failures, but this exponential expansion of opportunities for human-to-human contact is certainly not one of them.

The traditional media in 2008 is alive, if not well. Newspapers and radio are adjusting, slowly, but the outlook is grim. How does an American-based NYTimes compete with a global Yahoo! News? How does an independent radio station compete with internet streams, Aires, and Pandora? How does TV and film keep up with iTunes? How do small NPR stations compete with free podcasts? How does Playboy compete with YouPorn? Only time will tell, but you can be sure that tomorrow's kids won't want last second's news, let alone yesterday's paper.