From witness to filter

The truism about modern journalism is that quality investigative journalism and well researched articles are hard to find. Media watchers provide lots of reasons, from the 24-hour news cycle to the decrease in advertising revenue and the segmentation of the news into specialized websites that don't support general civic-minded journalism. For example, online, one doesn't have to flip through front page news stories in order to find the sports section.

"How can we save journalism?" is the question that usually gets asked of media experts. Let me say up front, I will not try to save journalism in the next 500 words. However, trying to get media coverage for TurboVote during our fundraising campaign has given me some ideas about how journalism works right now.

Of the several writers who posted about TurboVote, all post online and the majority of their posts could be described as being a combination of filter and column. Their blogs are like filters in that they curate what links to share and are like columns in that they always add an opinion. Even when a journalist posted just a link to our story in the Atlantic and said nothing else, it could be assumed that their opinion was "I agree with this opinion". Here's the important observation: after getting a brief post in an Atlantic blog, we were able to get seven other journalists to link to that story, but almost no new views or words were added.

I think this is a good way to describe how the vast majority of journalism works right now. Mainstream media is becoming more like a filter and less like a content creator. Assuming that this analysis is right, and that Superman isn't flying in anytime soon to change all the huge dynamic forces leading to this development, then the important question is "where does this path lead?"

The first big impact is that those people who have a message will be solely responsible for creating the original content associated with that message. This has been the case to some extent, but now it is more extreme.

To illustrate, think of Barack Obama and health care reform. The White House created a lot of bullet point arguments about health care, distributing them through social media and their website and tried to get those bullet points through the mainstream media filter. The filter displayed these arguments, but spent at least an equal amount of time displaying the promoters of the "death panel" myth.

A lot of people were disappointed with the media for not doing a better job at dispelling the death panel myth. However, if trends continue, people should accept that disappointment and move on. The mainstream press is going to continue acting like a filter. The people to be disappointed with are those on the other side of the health care debate who did not rise to the challenge of creating content that could compete with death panels.

President Obama, and everyone with a message, needs to complete the transition into a modern media producer. The standard for content coming out of the White House needs to be much higher. The President's message needs to make it through the mainstream media filter and it is competing with the entire internet. Staring into a camera for 5 minutes just doesn't cut it anymore. Luckily, creative content has never been cheaper to produce.