Jun
30
2008
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Opinion is Cheap, Easy |
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 30 June 2008 |
As a blogger who produces orginal content--as in original reporting, TV and Documentaries from Iraq--I am fearful of the decline of newspapers and the hard news sections of the major TV/Cable networks.
As crappy as they are, at least they are something.
The Cable/TV networks essentially give away products for free in the hopes people will watch them then sell the audience to advertisers.
As a business, the goal is to put out the product that gets the most eyeballs for the least expense.
Two "strategists" bickering is some pretty cheap TV. I remember clearly eating breakfast in the Camp Fallujah chow hall as two "strategists" one Democrat, one Republican, bickered over the success of the troop surge in Iraq.
I'm sure it was all relatively cheap and an easy way to fill four minutes of airtime.
The problem is, those two "strategists" had never been to Iraq, and knew absolutely nothing of any value about Iraq. On an important foreign policy issue, where people make decisions based on inputs from the news media, the inputs from the two "strategists" could have only made people less informed.
Covering Iraq in person, on the ground, outside the wire, off the major bases and outside the hotel is difficult, dangerous and more expensive than having two clueless strategists bicker about it.
As ad revenues drop and audiences diversify, free news content of any meaningful value become scarce and meaningful, fact-based information will be commoditized.
The people who really need to know will pay for proprietary reporting which will not be made available to public in a detailed and useful form.
In some ways, the DVDs I sell are a form of that. If all a person cares about is that the troop is working, they will not buy my DVDs. If they want to know how and why it worked, they will buy the DVDs.
What this does is lend more power to the the few organizations who will provide orginal content--fact based content to those who will pay for it.
Oil traders will pay money to know what exactly is going on in Nigeria or Iran. But it does not pay for a news organization to gather and deliver it to a mass audience when two "strategists" spouting opinion can produce an audience for far less.
Over time, more opinions will be based on fewer facts in areas where the facts are expensive to obtain.
I am not sure how or even if the trend can be reversed. The audience seems content to watch the opinions on TV.
The newspapers are dwindling, and that is a function of on-line availability of generic news and a negative reaction to bias in the delivery of information.
Hard news is, as Glenn Reynolds says, still the killer app of the major media organizations, but as long as it is more profitable to put out opinion--two strategists bickering is what we will get.
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