Lis­ten: Deer­hunter — “White Ink”

Last night’s Front­line report on the cat and mouse between main­stream media and new media was pret­ty enlight­en­ing. It was also a telling illus­tra­tion of how Amer­i­ca’s pri­or­i­ties have changed under dereg­u­la­tion, begin­ning with the Rea­gan Admin­is­tra­tion. Most impor­tant­ly per­haps is that we’re now liv­ing under the crass tute­lage of the worst rob­ber barons in his­to­ry, cre­at­ing a new labor pact in which we’re all interns pro­duc­ing infor­ma­tion for a cor­po­rate mega­lith. [Hi Google!]

Refresh­ing­ly, for­mer LA Times edi­tor Dean Baquet, unlike many stal­wart main­stream media types, admit­ted that estab­lished news­pa­pers had every incen­tive to be in the van­guard of the tran­si­tion to inter­net pub­li­ca­tion, but they blew it. For­mer CBS Dig­i­tal head Lar­ry Kramer made the fur­ther point that brand­ing favored major news organizations…and still does! Con­trary to the image we have of news­rooms being head­ed by stodgy car­i­ca­tures of old school news­men, there’s a will­ing­ness to expand online, but no mon­ey to sup­port the ven­ture. In short, and this is some­thing I get to in the next para­graph, this is about killing an Amer­i­can insti­tu­tion, the only one with the abil­i­ty to afford us a free press.

It’s a shame that Vil­lage Voice Media boss Michael Lacey was­n’t inter­viewed. His push toward hyper­local­iza­tion is a grow­ing trend in main­stream media, favored by cap­i­tal man­agers and “media ana­lysts,” sup­pos­ed­ly because it’s what con­sumers want. Of course, it would also blind all of us to the issues that bind us togeth­er as a nation and a glob­al com­mu­ni­ty, push­ing us back toward the pen­ny press­es of the 18th Cen­tu­ry at the very moment that world events like glob­al warm­ing should bring us ever clos­er together.