21 January - Media - required

 Influence, Infleunced, or Influencer

As we move into week two of the course, the assigned reading material suggests that it is all about the change. Everyone is going digital, and all things can be sourced from your smart phone.

My family was early adopter of the computer. My brother and I had the Radio Shack TRS 80. We were very lucky. In high school I was the editor of the Jefferson Bear Facts and we used a very early Apple product. 

Computers were  funded and created for  military government projects.  In the 1960’s you could find room sized computers running. Personal computers began to surface in the late 60s and early 70s. Email was invented in 1971.  California's Silicon Valley began to take shape building microprocessors and eventually launched web browsers in 1990.  The dotcom book surfaced in the mid 1990s and the rest is history.

The world started to see technology come together to share tasks and resources.  Tech has shaped all formats of the written word. One can find electronic books, audio recordings, podcasts, journals, texts, and podcasts virtually.  You can read the same virtual edition of a newspaper at any location in the world and at any time.  The publishing business has capitalized on this creating content crosses many platforms.  It truly is an exciting time and if you have the time, you have access to TBs of data at the click of a button.  Consumers of the media demand one click articles and a journalist can publish their article on a new site, printer, blog, YouTube channel, Twitter account, IG account, Tik Tock, and podcast all at the same time. (I am sure I left something off).  Tech is toted as green and it also empowers those with disabilities making it easier for them to access information. 

Many content websites have paid advertisements that generate revenue.  To date Google is the most profitable media and data platform but they are not the content creators. They are a delivery and distribution site.  By selling ads and paid search programs one can raise search engine visibility.

Since 2005, more than a quarter of the country’s newspapers have closed. (Polgreen, 2022). This is a sad fact. But it is also the reality of business.  Coloradoans mourned when the Rocky Mountain  News shut their doors in 2009 just shy of the 150th Anniversary of the paper.

The ideology of a journalist purely printing the facts and letting readers make their own decisions has gone out the window. Most media companies have been bought by the rich or consumed my large media companies.  These companies typically have a bias.  Even the pure news media like NPR, National Public Radio and VOA Voice of America have leaning trends.

In 1839 Edward Bulwer-Lytton authored the popular phrase "The pen is mightier than the sword"   

He believed the the written word is more effective than violence as a means of social or political change.  That still remains true but the world has certainly gotten a bit complicated. As we have seen in recent years with a smart phone anyone can quickly become a journalist or at least trend on social media.

Substack

One of the most interesting developments for online content was the launch of Substack. 

Taken from their About page

Building a better future for writing

We started Substack because we believe that what you read matters and that good writing is valuable.

We believe that writers, bloggers, thinkers, and creatives of every background should be able to pursue their curiosity, generating income directly from their own audiences and on their own terms.

When readers pay writers directly, writers can focus on doing the work they care about most. A few hundred paid subscribers can support a livelihood. A few thousand makes it lucrative.

Readers win, too. By opting into direct relationships with writers, we can be more selective with how we consume information, homing in on the ideas, people, and places we find most meaningful.

The company was created in 2017 by three tech friends Chris Best, Jairaj Sethi, and Hamish McKenzie in San Francisco. They believed in the mission of creating valuable writing and content but also understood the politics of modern day journalism.  Co-creator Chris Best explained on the Joe Rogan show that Substack is an online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. This momentum picked up during COVID and writers grew their audiences and brands on the platform.  It is a clean and tidy version of grass roots journalism. 

Possible Substack interests:

Molly Wizenberg - Writer, teacher, person living in Seattle. I've written three memoirs: The Fixed Stars, A Homemade Life, and Delancey. mollywizenberg.com

Marian Bull - Writer and potter. Here talking about cooking.

Kelly Maher - Life is basically magic and urban farming can remind us of that fact. Cheese is amazing. Stories from the tiny farm and life more broadly.

In order to influence online readership you have to have your own brand.  There are courses and podcasts that focus on just that.  Creating brand loyalty is a niche and required market.

Realities

We demand instantaneous news and sometimes the journalist makes the sacrifice. 

Just after sunset February 10, two men in a white Dodge Ram pickup pulled up in front of  Heber Lopez Vasquez's small radio studio in southern Mexico. One man got out, walked inside and shot the 42-year-old journalist dead. Lopez's 12-year-old son, Oscar, the only person with him, hid, Lopez's brother told Reuters.  He was one the 13 journalist killed in Mexico in the last 12 months.

There is a price for the demand. The news has been filled with journalists deaths.  Notably, this summer on May 11, 2022 Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed while reporting from the West Bank. 

At the same time on the May 11, 2022  -  Pillars of Democracy: The Media  Online Discussion was held focusing on media.  If you have an extra 90 minutes, give it a listen as the panel looks at the health of media and journalism. 

Key thoughts from the panel:

Journalism is in a troubled place and looking for a new identity.  “The technology of the internet, to be precise, has completely transformed journalism” (Pillars of Democracy, May 11, 2022).

Journalists must flatter their audiences to keep up the numbers and this makes it virtually impossible to have a normal conversation. Journalism has been a part of the democratic system since day one.  

Journalism must appeal to an audience vs just covering the news. In early democracy the importance of journalism was essential; however,  it has been grossly watered down.  One may believe that the press is part of the political warfare in this country. Advocacy journalism – you have to give them what they want.  The panel cited the face that 54% Americans can only read at 6 grade level.  The statistics is up for debate but the premise of keeping journalism pure is not.

We will never have slow reporting ever again. The consumers demand more. The advertisers demand more. The technology gives more.

PS - A really huge inforgraphic from Hewlett Packard with some cool history. 

References

(2022) Pillars of Democracy: The Media. [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-10267/.

Polgreen, Lydia. "Protect our Democracy. Support Local News." The New York Times, Dec 13, 2022. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/protect-our-democracy-support-local-news/docview/2754256162/se-2.