One
currency, one language, one newspaper.
These may all come true one day – to the detriment of society.
The world loves the US dollar, but many currencies drive the marketplace and digital money has not yet taken hold. English reaches 20-25% of the world. But so does Chinese. And Spanish is growing. No one language speaks for the world.
Any when it comes to the media, it seems like there are many voices, but they may be drying up. We can’t afford to have just one media company.
These may all come true one day – to the detriment of society.
The world loves the US dollar, but many currencies drive the marketplace and digital money has not yet taken hold. English reaches 20-25% of the world. But so does Chinese. And Spanish is growing. No one language speaks for the world.
Any when it comes to the media, it seems like there are many voices, but they may be drying up. We can’t afford to have just one media company.
Look
at print and TV media. There’s a lot of
cross-ownership. Someone like Rupert
Murdoch can own multiple papers, such as The Post and WSJ. He can own a TV network, such as Fox. Many media outlets, nationally, or within a
city, can be owned by a single person or company. A lot of content is syndicated, too. When it comes down to it, a handful of media
conglomerates run the media. It’s
getting worse, due to the cost of producing journalism and the competition for
ad revenue.
According
to The New York Times, US newspaper circulation lost 8.3% over the past five
years. In Europe, the drop was more than
double that, at 21.3%. Now publishers of
newspapers are talking about forming an organization that pulls resources to
sell ads at all of the newspapers. Not
only does that cost jobs, it limits competition, and threatens the editorial
independence of each publication. But
the industry embraces such an idea.
Newspapers
have been pathetic since The Great Recession beat them up, coupled with the 1-2
punch of the Internet. Some papers
closed down or limited their publication frequency.
Daily editions thinned out. Original local content got filled
increasingly by newswire stories. Hard
news got substituted by ever-green fluff features. The American public, as a result, is given a
diluted product that doesn’t elevate society.
As a result, higher prices for an inferior product has eroded
readership, which continues the cycle of papers cutting back and further
eroding readership, etc.
The
cycle needs to be broken. How?
We
need to start a nationwide non-profit that raises money for publications
locally. The publications have to commit
to using the funds to support real journalism. Without a free and vibrant
press, society suffers. So does the book
publishing world. It needs a strong media
to give coverage to its books.
I
see how crappy newspapers are. On a recent trip, I read The Providence Journal, Boston
Globe, Boston Herald, and New Haven Register.
I was not impressed. They are thin papers with big type, no depth, and
soft in their coverage. This repeats
itself throughout the country. We need a
turn-around.
It
might not happen. The internet is taking
eyeballs away from print. Consolidating
will increase. Society will need to
decide if it will support newspapers.
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Brian
Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and
not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email
him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in
the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
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