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Those businesses & individual who failed to tap the power of Internet & blog or RSS Feeds would be left out!!
Hume: Hard work can restore the news business
By Ben Rubin
North Adams Transcript
Saturday, April 30, 2005 - NORTH ADAMS -- In her lecture, "Talk Shows, Blogs and the Future of News," at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts on Thursday, writer and journalist Ellen Hume said many new streams of media are getting all the attention, though they are basically regurgitation machines for the more traditional forms of news.
Hume said that 25 percent of ABC's news is generated by its own news staff, 54 percent for CNN and 14 percent for Fox News. A measly 1 percent of all the news found online is uniquely produced by Web site staff writers.
While the ominously, cynically nicknamed Main Stream Media (MSM) or Legacy Media is mocked by its spry, sassy younger brother, the bloggers and Internet news sources are actually working off big bro's stories. Think about this: AOL and Yahoo! edged out CNN and the New York Times as the most used Internet news sources -- but who are they posting on their sites?
There's more, of course. Hume, like many media pundits, says the news is in crisis.
"Having the watchdog bark at everything mean we've lost our bite," she said. "Too much time with Scott Peterson, not enough time with Rwanda."
In what she coined as the "attention economy," the race for the public's eyes and ears generally degenerates to simply a race to the bottom. Serious discourse isn't working it seems, and so the media needs to prod at people with antics to get them to listen, she said.
In this distopian milieu, newsrooms opt for White House press packages, ranting political extremists on cheap-to-run opinion shows and very little verification and fact checking in the daily struggle to "fill their news hole," said Hume.
"We're killing ourselves with entertainment," Hume said. "We're going for the ice cream, instead of the vegetables."
Hume said that the bells and whistles of the new news brings the viewer lost in distraction, a problem easily recognizable in Fox News' dramatic, thumping music or splash of colorful graphics, eerily reminiscent to "Demolition Man's" mocking take on futuristic news.
The blogger phenomenon means anybody and everybody can become a journalist, not with years of groveling and mandatory trips to the local deli, but with one quick jaunt to blogster.com. Hume said that the innovation of Internet news has washed away accountability -- we don't even know who these bloggers are, let alone their credentials.
With the current status of the news and the fog of blog, real news, good news is "having a hard time finding its economic footing," Hume said. Still, while Hume related theories that the news in the future will only be a subsidiary of the mega-global corporation known simply as Googlezon (Google and Amazon), or be used only when viewers don't get one of Jon Stewart's jokes, she said she remains optimistic that good news will survive.
Good news, Hume said, isn't as flashy or fun, and is more costly than maintaining the status quo, but people need it and deserve it. She said journalism at its best is independent -- independent from corporate ownership and independent from sources -- proportionate (think Michael Jackson trial); verified, transparent and accountable. The ultimate goal of a journalist is to be a skeptic, and to denounce and expose those who try to mislead the public, she said.
From consumers and digesters of the daily news, Hume suggested as much critical consideration as she expected from reporters. Ironically, it's easier to find everything nowadays, except the truth. Be a smart shopper, get a variety of news sources and look in places that aren't just a reinforcement of your niche lifestyle, she said.
Hume added that if consumers wanted good journalism, they have to participate by supporting the news financially and complaining about the news when they're not happy with it.
"Consumers beware, journalists -- remember, what your job really is, because if you don't do it, who will?" Hume said.
Hume served as the White House and political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal from 1983 to 1988 and a national reporter with the Los Angeles Times from 1977 and 1983. She was a weekly analyst on CNN's "Reliable Sources," a panelist on PBS's "Washington Week in Review" and periodically visited NBC's "Meeting the Press."
A recipient of many awards, Hume has worked in the media for 30 years and is currently the director of the Center on Media and Society at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
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