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August 5, 2006 Marc Gunther, senior writer for Fortune Magazine writes that the advent of 300 cable television channels and the Internet have fragmented audiences, and that this explosion of choice has left us worse off in two particular areas. First is journalism where “the evening newscasts, big-city newspapers, and the national news magazines once had the money, access, skills, commitment and power to deliver lots of original reporting and put important issues on the national agenda.” The second is politics where “moderate and responsible voices of the MSM (main stream media) get drowned out by partisan, opinionated cableheads and bloggers.” Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, in “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More,” writes that mass culture isn’t so mass any more, instead, culture is a “mass of niches”. Anderson’s book, mostly about business, sees this mass of niches as the expansion of infinite choice and expanding business opportunities. “Those online media businesses are all driven to a surprising degree, not by a handful of hits, but by the far larger number of books, DVDs, music and web sites with narrow appeal.” These two perspectives certainly aren’t mutually exclusive; people can be thinking more about less while buying less of more, but are they accurate? And have 300 television channels and the Internet in the aggregate left us better or worse off? On journalism, Gunther argues that there is more information available to us than ever, but he doesn’t think we are better informed. He’s certainly not alone in that opinion. The argument is quite common; it has two parts. One, because we have so many choices the major news networks have lost viewers as the major newspapers have lost readers. Both have lost resources and influence. True enough. Two, before 300 television channels, the Internet, and the blogs, the major broadcast networks and newspapers provided better in-depth coverage of the full spectrum of news stories and they actually informed viewers and readers in a way they no longer are informed. The proliferation of cable news networks and the Internet provides greater numbers and more varied sources of news, but they confuse more than they educate. But does this argument meet the common sense test? Did the half-hour nightly news TV broadcasts on ABC, CBS, and NBC and the major newspapers in the years before widespread cable television and the Internet really better inform us than the 24/7 news coverage these two new media now provide? Were we really able to gain a better understanding of complex issues from a few powerful news sources that had remarkably similar points of view? Were we more likely to be educated on a complex issue like global warming, for example, by watching a seven-minute segment of a network news broadcast, a 20 minute segment of 60 Minutes, or by reading articles in the Sunday editions of our local news paper than we can now by watching the plethora of hour-long documentaries, pro and con, on the Discovery or Science Channels? Cable television and the Internet are much more than news and entertainment. They are the digital libraries of the 21st Century. Not everyone seeks to become informed about every issue, or even some issues, but those who do certainly have far greater resources available to them now in their homes and offices than they did in the heyday of the MSM. Pick a subject. Google it or look it up on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, and see what you get. Regarding politics, as for the moderate and responsible voices of the MSM getting “drowned out” by the partisan and the opinionated, it is true that cable television talk shows and Internet have given rise to the more conservative and liberal elements of political expression and that they are used as tools for partisan spin. What you also get on cable television talk shows and the Internet, however, is vigorous and informative debate for and against the full spectrum of political issues. Before cable and the Internet, we only got this watching political candidates debate during election campaigns. Isn’t more debate in a free society better than less? The people on the street Jay Leno interviews on the Tonight Show, notwithstanding, the overwhelming majority of Americans are neither fools nor idiots. They may not know the capital of Nebraska, but they know spin when they hear it. Again, not everyone wants to be informed, at least not all the time, but those who do are better served by cable television and the Internet than those before it were. Critics, of course, will argue that political partisans tend to listen to the cable talk shows and read the blogs and articles posted on the Internet that conform to their own views. That’s true. Conservatives tend toward Fox News. Liberals tend toward CNN. But this doesn’t make either ignorant of opposing or moderate views. Only the most extreme partisans are oblivious to opposing arguments. After all, you have to know and understand what the other side is saying. Politics is the art of persuasion. Free speech and the tools that leverage free speech, cable television and the Internet are good for democracy. Cable television (mostly satellite around the world) and the Internet are playing a major role in expanding democracy in countries where it hasn’t previously existed. That’s why authoritarian countries are so afraid of it. If that’s a good thing there, why is it a bad thing here? Anderson’s views, in “The Long Tail,” reflect the realities of the modern American economy. “We’re leaving the water cooler era, when most of us listened, watched, and read from the same relatively small pool of mostly hit content. And we’re entering the micro culture era, when we are all into different things.” If your local shopping mall doesn’t have what you’re looking for, you can find it on the Internet. If you want to sell your baseball card collection, you no longer have to accept .40 cents on the dollar from a collectibles shop owner. You can get $1.20 on the dollar on eBay. People with like interests can now more easily connect with each other and with sources of supply previously difficult to discover. There isn't much to dispute in Anderson's analysis. And Gunther, in reviewing Anderson’s book, doesn't question it; he questions whether all this choice is “an unalloyed good. “Do we lose something as a society if we have less in common?” That Americans increasingly have less in common is a recurring theme in the MSM, on cable television talk shows, and on the Internet. They cite many causes for this including the proliferation of cable television and the Internet. But is the relationship between cable television and the Internet and American’s having less in common cause and effect or just correlation. Do Americans have less in common because of cable and the Internet, or are cable and the Internet simply a result of the fact that American’s have less in common? Probably both, but nothing is that simple. Like any evolutionary trend, it’s easy to draw conclusions about cause and effect relationships, but they aren’t always what we think they are. The fact is, however, that whatever has given rise to them, the trends in journalism, politics, and business discussed here are not fleeting. They reflect the evolution of American society and are here to stay, baring one of those natural disasters of biblical proportions we now learn about frequently on cable television and the Internet. And like all such evolutionary change those who adapt to it best flourish. We may now be living in a mass of niches, and some of us may be lost. My guess is that most of us aren’t. If you are one of the lost, I recommend you take out your compass and navigate.
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