Posted by Further In
The Media is in flux. The barrier to entry in the market—a publisher—has been totally destroyed by the internet. As this supply-barrier exploded, the market has a glut of content to sort through.
The logical next step, then, is that the market will call for a sieve.
There are two kinds of sieves here; I suspect that the next wave of media will be fact-checkers, bias-miners, and truth-tellers. The market, in essence, will create its own licensing feature, and give kudos to those organizations that do a good job of true journalism, and will punish those organizations that do not.
The second type will be media aggregators, who will read thousands of pieces of news per day, and decide which are well-written, which are biased, which offer insightful commentary, etc.
In other words, I don’t believe that the New York Times is going under—I think they are going to be evaluated by other sites that have yet to appear. These sites will take the mountains of content, determine which is true and which is not, and then determine what is worth reading and what is not.
I believe that this will happen in response to the polarization of news agencies such as MSNBC and Fox News. People like to hear what they believe preached back to them, but there is a growing discontent in the market—many who would rather learn than be coddled. These truth-seekers will eventually become a strong enough market force that they will be tailored to.
I should say that I hope that they grow to be a market force. Such seekers of truth—if a force to be reckoned with—would do a great deal of good for society.
