Replies

"When both the public and the news makers learn they can communicate with out a mediator, the days of the media are long gone."

A contributing factor is the demonstrated difficulty in making content-oriented sites a paying commercial proposition (see Salon).

Advertising won't support a site that doesn't draw traffic (and demographics). And a site with shallow content can't earn enough in subscriptions.

Accordingly, the current formulations of the network news shows are commercial disasters on the web. And the CNN website probably has a fraction of the traffic that Drudge draws.

Similarly, the newspapers and newsweeklies have yet to turn a dime's worth of profit from their web ventures. And still don't have the foggiest notion of how to do it. In contrast, Rush 24/7 is doubtless a paying proposition.

You are absolutely correct. The more there is internet, the weaker the mainstream media.

During the early days of the internet I had many discussions about this. I've concluded that the possibility exists provided the internet doesn't itself become controlled by surrogates. That is the real question, and it is an open one.

One of the things that needs to happen to avoid surrogate control is that user, front-end software for setting up and configuring email servers, web servers and the like needs to be fielded to the 'common man'. It is possible to do now, and I do it myself, but it requires a fair amount of knowledge of how ISPs, the internet, and networking in general work. "Ease of use" software could make this capability far more accessible to the average internet user, if produced and fielded. ISPs, government agencies and big corporations are fighting desperately (and quietly) to stem this trend of user controlled services. There is simply no technical reason for your email, web pages, dns services, etc. to be processed remotely. The real internet news, and the really big story of the history of the internet, is this battle that few even know about. It is the battle to force users through surrogate systems.

By doing this, the avenues available for surrogates are diminshed. In a world where the 'common man' runs his own services, ISPs control only the actual routing of packets between your computer and the rest of the world (the same 'simple' services offered by the major telecomms to ISPs in the form of what is called the "internet backbone"). Email, web publishing, DNS services; all these things would have to be controlled by the users computer. I think this is the only way it will happen.

I'm not sure the news media will go. The filters will change, but the filters will not go away. The New York Times exercises its greatest powers not in the make-up of a story but in the choice (or placement) of a story. What is and where it is "fit" to them is the news. Drudge and Free Republic do the same thing.

The question becomes, then, which funnel is employed, and to what extent it modifies the connection between events & event makers and the audience.

Each technological revolution creates its own limitations within its possibilities. I disagree with the notion that radio and television created instaneous news communication: it was the telegraph that brought news real-time. Suddenly consumers had news instaneously, and not just through the newspapers (think Western Union). During elections, for example, national returns were broadcast by light signals from tall buildings. Otherwise interested consumers gathered outside telegraph offices. It was a tremendous empowerment and led as much as any other factor to the development of the "nation."

How many people here know that photographs were transmitted over the wires as early as 1900, or that transmissions were converted to type automatically?

The Associated Press was a conglomerate created in 1848 to manage the new telegraph technology. What started as a newspaper syndicate to relay news from Europe to New York from steamer arrivals at Halifax soon became the chief filter of domestic national news. The AP made it efficient and practical and highly profitable. It made the telegraph work for the people, thus its commercial success.

Then what happens: suddenly APs hegemony is busted by radio and television. Evening papers go out of business. The same thing happens to broadcast television: its dominance is thwarted by cable, or, as you say, greater bandwidth. We went from copper wires to isolated radio waves to fiber optic cable capable of 100s of channels, and so on. Yet AP remains, having adapted itself to the medium.

Has the content filter changed? I submit that the change has been in quantity not type.

The revolution comes wholly of when and where the middle man is truly cut. I love, for example, to see congressional web content posted here on FR: both sides of the equation are far better served than through some media filter. It is an huge innovation that you are correct to celebrate.

Here's my personal relation to the situation: I'm not a big web user outside of email or yahoo & library research. The web has greatly facilitated my research by cutting out various middlemen and other obstructions. I can learn more more quickly than ever before. Email, of course, saves time and money in ways unimaginable to me just five years ago.

Otherwise, I go to FR for the simple reason that I want to understand not hear the news. A smart politician would pay much attention to this site. Imagine being able to listen in to the voters' intimate reactions. Polls can never gauge anything more than watered generalities. FR is juice.

As you say, the reason is the absence of the middleman (precisely what a pollster is). The greatest advance brought us by JimRob is this ability of the consumer to react, real time & directly, to the filters. Yet is goes beyond: the consumers thereby supply their own content, become their own filters. Revolutionary.

Now, as I said, I don't bother with other websites. This is the filter I have chosen. Do other places accomplish what JimRob has created? I doubt it. And I doubt any of them were sued by the Old School filters because of it.

Yes, this is revolution -- more properly, a counter-revolution.

God blessya, Mr. Robinson.