You’ve heard this song before: ‘Old Media’ is newspapers, television, magazines, and radio; ‘New Media’ is the internet, blogosphere, vblogs, web 2.0 applications, myspace, facebook, and the Time magazine ‘person of the year.’ More specifically, people like the founders of youtube, ABC’s Amanda Congdon and ESPN’s ‘Sports Guy’ Bill Simmons who built up a following at the grassroots level via the internet. The trail blazing spirit prevalent in individuals like these led to all regular cable turning digital, terrestrial radio giving way to satellite and DSL connections becoming wireless. The Old Media vs. New Debate is a fiction intended to create provincial divisions. We, all of us who believe in the sharing of information relevant to the public interest, are all part of one united media culture and media industry. New New Media is about unification instead of division and collaboration in place of competition. It will ‘bring balance to the force’ and end the conflict between the two concepts. The concepts of ‘Old Media’ and ‘New Media’ will soon become ambiguous; then dissipate as this fusion occurs. In the future, there will be no ‘radio people’ or ‘print people.’ Every television station will require a myspace or facebook page to stay on the air. Viral videos will influence and shape coverage. Print journalists will need the public speaking skills required to appear on radio and television regularly. Media professionals will need to be, as the band Everclear once put it “everything to everyone.” Stephen Colbert is the Karl Marx of the New New Media movement. The man who coined the 2006 word of the year ‘truthiness,’ is truly an inspiration to young people entering the media industry. He displayed what can happen when internet, television and other multimedia synergize. Colbert utilized the internet to help convince his viewers to help name a Hungarian bridge after him and alter the information in Wikipedia. He called on his viewers to alter the entry for African elephants: “Due to the efforts of Stephen Colbert, the African elephant population has tripled” However, his biggest accomplishment came while expressing his inalienable right to free speech at the White House press corps.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879&q=STEPHEN+COLBERT&hl=en

100 years from now, journalism schools all over the world will point to this moment as a critical turning point in media history. In his courageous speech, he called out the major media for all their mistakes and the numerous issues that they covered erroneously. His poignant and accurate observations led to his performance landing harsh reviews from the newspapers and ‘old media.’ (Of course, this would happen as the people reviewing him were some of the very same people he slammed during his performance.) They claimed that he ‘died’ on stage. However, the video of his performance quickly spread through the internet and blogosphere where his reviewers found him hilarious and witty. They said he ‘killed’ on stage. One routine elicited two completely different perceptions for the media consumer. In a previous era, only the first report would have prevailed.

It was destined to happen. During the past few years, the major news media saturated us with O.J. Simpson, Michael Richards, Natalee Holloway, Jessica Lynch, Terri Schiavo, Lacey Peterson, Chandra Levy, the Duke Lacrosse team, Anna Nicole Smith and the ‘Runaway Bride.’ For nearly all their viewers, these stories all had little or no bearing on their daily lives. These cost effective to report and produce stories had no actual importance for most people and stood in place of the actual issues that dramatically affect us all. The corporate media has left most of the American people uninformed and even misinformed on numerous issues including tax cuts, climate change, non-existent Al Qaeda-Iraq links, WMDs, health care, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The lack of coverage regarding Middle Eastern politics and Global Warming had (and will continue to have) deadly consequences. Most of us know all about presidential candidate Barack Obama’s abdominals, but little to nothing about his stance on substantive issues. What is more important to the viewer: who some b-list celebrity skank willed her money to or how all the ice at the top of the Earth will melt, flooding our coastal metropolises with 100 years?

It’s a good thing that massive amounts of power to reach people is available because all of it and more is required to conquer the current crisis in our midsts. The mainstream media is focused on profitability, marketability, and advertiser accommodation. The idea of news relevant to the public interest is a dying concept. The news value of their ‘content’ is in dire straits. In fact, it’s because of this corporate concentration that the term ‘content’ was created with it’s negative connotation as mere ‘filler’ for the much more important and valuable adspace. Through mass consolidation and merger mania, five conglomerates -Viacom, Time Warner, Disney, GE, and News Corporation- control nearly all of the media. There are dozens of channels, but they are all making essentially the same presentation or irrelevant, unimportant yet popular ‘events.’ There is a reform movement underway. Of course, this has gone largely unnoticed because the corporate media won’t likely report on media reform now will it? It seems every week, the mainstream media reaches a new low. Did the cable television news industry realize that we were currenlty involved in TWO WARS with the government possibly preparing a third while they were inundating the populace with Anna Nicole Smith? Then the bottom fell out even lower as the focus shifted to Britney Spears hair. (or lack thereof)

This was all prophesized by Howard Beale in Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar winning-film Network in 1975:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=771179425

Rupert Murdoch, the complete opposite of what New New Media is about, admitted himself that the internet is affecting his power. He lamented about losing his power to shape the agenda which is a wonderful thing for us all. Every major issue not covered by the mainstream press can be picked up and elaborated on by the user generated media. Media conglomeration is an awful thing, but the major positive side effect is an era in which content can be produced and distributed cheaply. A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is defined as ‘relying primarily on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively low number of servers.’ This peer to peer computer metaphor is the perfect analogy for the future of media and culture. Davids can influence Goliath more than ever. The guy who plays guitar on weekends at the corner tavern is closer to the mega star signed to a major label. The expansion team will consistently compete with the New York Yankees. Every time actual news degenerated into cross promotion and thinly disguised marketing for a media conglomerate’s other holdings, more people stopped being passive consumers and instead became active contributors. It will take a lot of hard work; and much more than mere technology and idealism. However, we are moving swiftly in the right direction and I strongly believe that these patterns will gain more forward momentum in the near future; and real progress is within our grasp.