Blogging

In a recent interview, Al Gore characterized The Daily Show as one of the best places to get news, saying that much like in the 13th century, the jester is perhaps the only one who can tell the truth without getting his head cut off.

News audiences are shrinking across the board -- television, magazines and newspapers are all feeling the loss. Online efforts from newspapers and television stations are slowing the tide somewhat, but the overall trend continues. So if conventional news outlets are suffering, where are all the readers going?

The size of the blogosphere doubled from May 2003 to May 2007. The Technorati index service is now tracking 70 million blogs, with 120,000 new blogs being created every day.

Most of these blogs don’t deal with news, but those that do become part of a conversation that dominates the blogosphere. Looking at Technorati’s Top 100 Blogs, the Huffington Post is No. 5, Daily Kos is No. 8, Michelle Malkin is No. 10, and TMZ.com is No. 11.

Huffington Post and Daily Kos are prominent left-wing blogs, Michelle Malkin is hard right, and TMZ is famous for uncensored celebrity gossip.

If newspapers want to find their missing readers, they should probably start looking there.

The mainstream media is basically in panic mode. They think they can solve this problem by “getting on the Internet” but the Internet is just a delivery mechanism. They can’t fix this by delivering the same product in a different medium. They have to change the product itself.

Mainstream media outlets aren’t just losing their analog audience to online, they are losing their audience completely -- losing it to smart, funny, opinionated sources that aren’t afraid to declare their biases and skewer sacred cows. I don’t think the Internet is going to kill journalism, but it may kill objective journalism.

News audiences are becoming increasingly polarized. Republicans and Democrats are clustering around sites that support their ideology, and the new generation is rejecting both sides.

Mainstream media pundits want to blame the Internet for this change in audience dynamics, but no one wants to confront the real problem. News consumers are turning their backs on objective journalism, and no one is ready to deal with it.

The page stops but the blog goes on.
Talk back to Michael at
http://www.lubbockonline.net/blogs/duff/