The Imminent Failure of Corprorate Media Really Isn’t that Bad

by guest contributor Lerone D. Wilson, originally published at Blackline

This being the last month of my matriculation at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, I’ve seized the occasion to reflect upon my experience at arguably the leading journalism institution in the country. It is here that I’ve had my first real exposure to the type of journalism and practices that fuel mainstream media stalwarts like the New York Times and Washington Post. It is also here that I’ve become convinced that the dominance of publications such as these is nearing its end.

His name is usually Sam Powers, or something similarly ubiquitous yet hard hitting. We’ve all seen him, whether it’s in the elevator or the Journalism School lobby. He wears a blazer and thick-rimmed glasses, adorned with a plain white shirt unbuttoned at the top, perhaps to demonstrate to the masses that he is indeed a man of the people.

When he speaks, he is always careful to demonstrate his vast knowledge and breadth of experience, and with a notepad in the back pocket of his corduroy pants and an ink pen as his scepter, he sets out to his divinely inspired task of bringing change to the world through journalism.

I make light of these characters who admittedly do well at the Journalism School, however my intent is not to imply that they are frauds, or unqualified. In fact, they are quite the contrary. They are the ones who, in my opinion, will land those coveted jobs at big newspapers and media outlets. But in many ways, that’s the problem.

As a result of its prior monopoly on the news, big media has grown arrogant. As if God himself appointed them to their task, they think they know exactly what needs to be covered, what’s important, and what consumers want, without actually listening to anyone in the process.

A couple weeks ago comedian and media critic Jon Stewart said that the mainstream media has been “dominating news coverage [of the Jeremiah Wright issue] like a missing white girl,” drawing parallel to the media’s similar fixation with over-covering missing children, to the detriment of more important issues that fall by the wayside.

In the midst of the Wright obsession, media critics have hit the airwaves to decry the mainstream media’s practices, author Arianna Huffington among them. But whereas in the past she would be relegated to a few minutes of airtime on the news, technology has since put her in a position to actually change the coverage.

The internet has allowed blogs like Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post to offer alternative coverage of news and events. This is made possible by giving regular people who lack the agenda and elitism of classically trained journalists, an opportunity to reach audiences who have in the past been off limits to everyone but big media. Such a threat to the core of their dominance has left the traditional media elites shaking in their penny loafers.

I had an opportunity a few months ago to speak with Jon Landman and Jim Roberts, both editors at the New York Times, about the growing competition that has arisen from bloggers. According to Roberts, the Huffington Post in particular is giving their online operation vigorous competition.

“There is some frustration,” Roberts conceded, “I worry most that advertisers are being drawn to other sites. That’s probably where ultimately our concerns lie.” While the New York Times’ website gets about 12 million views, in contrast to the Huffington Post’s 4 million, the fact that the Huffington Post’s web traffic grew almost 9 times more than the Times’ last year alone is troubling to Times editors.

According to Landman, although the New York Times Online does very well, it makes a mere fraction of what the declining print division does. Meanwhile, blogs like the Huffington Post are sometimes beating them in coverage as well. “We’ve found that blogs do a great job breaking news on the web, better than frequently updated news stories,” Landman says, which explains their most recent foray into online blogs.

But the terrific expenses they incur, including their full time staff and magnificent Manhattan high-rise, quickly consumes the Times’ online revenues. Meanwhile blogs are much more financially nimble due to their low costs, setting them up to turn profits faster and easier.

For example, the New York Times Company paid about $17 million last year alone in retirement benefits to former employees. By contrast in the same year the Huffington Post, one of the largest blogs in operation, had total operating expenses of about $11 million.

Large news divisions across the country are experiencing similar rising costs in the face of dwindling advertisers, who also have adjusted much of their focus to smaller internet sites with narrower demographics.

The sinking ship that is the mainstream media became even more apparent just last month when CBS News entered discussions with CNN over outsourcing it’s entire news division. This, of course, is an alternative to scrapping the entire division entirely. This is just the beginning.

I’m not proposing that we will awaken to a future in which longstanding names like the New York Times won’t exist, rather an era in which news coverage isn’t dominated by a handful of agenda-driven businesses. There will still be a place for big businesses, who are the only ones so far able to put boots on the ground across the world to do actual reporting, but they will be forced to surrender their control of the overall news narrative to everyday people.

As such, I don’t mourn the death of the mainstream media one bit, as it gives the power of the press to the people, serving democracy like never before along the way. This is terrible news for traditional media, and the tradition-oriented institutions like Columbia that feed them.

Resultantly, it may be the case in the near future that my journalism diploma is worth little more than the paper its printed on, and my dear friend Sam Powers may one day graduate and enter a world in which his particular skills are obsolete. This is unfortunate, but truthfully, Sam kinda annoyed me anyway.