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Why mainstream media doesn’t stand a chance against social media
Why mainstream media doesn’t stand a chance against social media
June 04, 2010
According to this excellent blog from Deb Wenger, traditional media may be unwittingly killing itself in the race to compete with social media platforms.
The shocking truth would appear to be this:
The mainstream media simply cannot compete with social media – on any level.
And that includes News sourcing and issuing. Bloggers rarely even, it seems, use the traditional journalistic avenues to find their blog content. Bloggers have a different News agenda to the Press. And their online audiences are organically increasing, too.
The message from Wenger’s blog is painfully clear.
The only way for the traditional media providers to survive is to adapt, collaborate and embrace social media as an intrinsic part of its modus operandi.
Anything less will inevitably see audiences finding their news elsewhere, online - and usually for free.
If I were involved in traditional media management, Wenger’s blog post would both fascinate and horrify me at the same time.
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Comments
Hi Simon
Many thanks for your inputs - much appreciated.
I noted with interest your comments on the definition of News, and whilst valid and really useful, the blog post was really centering upon the way mainstream media is not grasping the opportunities presented online. Bloggers, of course, are.
I agree with you in that some of the nationals, including the Guardian, Telegraph and Times, have outstanding online presences, which are in some ways ground-breaking for the British Press.
The TV and radio media are also struggling, but not in such visible ways as newspapers - this struggle is seen most painfully in the regionals. During my time at Northcliffe Newspaper Group, it was very much the case that revenues should be expanded on a minimum outlay - certainly from an editorial standpoint.
Ironic, then, that we are seeing such a stubborn refusal by many UK regionals to embrace and expand upon these online opportunities. Journalists, in my experience fall into 2 camps: the traditionalists, ever bemoaning about the good old days and how it's all changed too much, ans the growing tide of contemporary digital editors, hungry for more online innovation in their organisations.
What hampers both types is the failing business models and outdated management structures behind these British newsrooms. That needs to die for the mainstream media - in particular regional newspaper offerings - to live.
As for the nature of News - I think this will be defined by audience requirements, not by traditional newsgatherers and distributors such as the Beeb. Time will tell.
Hi Chris - I think you make an interesting point about the need for the traditional media to understand and embrace social media, and I agree that this is essential. The printed press, in particular, has been very very slow to see the potential of online media and just doesn't seem to understand it. The availability of free information is a big threat to their paid-for models and the likes of Rupert Murdoch haven't yet worked out how to deal with this. But I can't agree with the observation that 'the mainstream media simply cannot compete with social media - on any level'. This simply isn't true - the mainstream media has resources and access that the average blogger can only dream about. The biggest threat to the traiditional media is its almost total loss of focus on what news actually is. The propaganda, groundless speculation, agendas, insinuations, outright lies, personal opinions and comments that fill most of the pages of most of our newspapers are not news. They are something else. News is the straightforward, balanced, fair-minded, factually correct reporting of information that it is in the public interest to know. The BBC continues to do this excellently - much better, in fact, than almost any other organisation or individual, It can do so because a) it has the resources; b) it is free from the editorial interference of a commercially-minded or politically-motivated owner. The average blogger may well have good access to information or the means to source it; they may well have an interesting take on that information; the information they bring into the public sphere may be vital - in this sense they are valuable. But almost none are independent or interested in presenting a full, fair, balanced and accurate summary of the facts. They are part of a wider 'comment culture' which seems to value opinion above the balanced reporting of information and which has also infected traditional media to an unacceptable degree. The mainstream media, uniquely, has the means to provide the full, fair, balanced and accurate reporting of information that matters; if it does not grasp this simple fact, it will die.
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