Which are you: "Reform the Media" or "We don't need the Media anymore"?

[OrlandoGator]

I'm inclined to say the latter. We got blogs. We got message boards. We got e-mail.

The corporate-owned media is no longer a reliable source of information. I think they've rendered themselves obsolete...it'll just take a few more years for the rest of the TV addicts to jump ship.

Discuss.

[phantom power]

1. The people who need convincing the most, rely on traditional media.

It's not the digerati who need better news, it's the people who still get their news from the MSM. It needs to be reformed.

[SeveneightyWhoa]

2. Um, if there was no mainstream media,

then blogs would really not have much to talk about.

How many blogs actually have reporters out on the scene -- in Iraq, for instance? Everything you read on blogs in basically based on what the mainstream media reports.

Both are essential.

[oscar111]

5. AAR is the beginning of a parallel media that will end MSM .. i hope

As more catch on to air america radio... AAR, which alone these days puts out the true reality to millions of passive "push media" folks...

as more catch on, they will become a market {i greatly dislike that Business School term, BTW} ... a market {groan} for a similar tv network, and newspapers of the big-city daily sort. {Chicago had a Union paper at one time i read}.

As reality gets ugly and only AAR tells the truth about it, millions will switch away from MSM. MSM will dry up.

AAR's offspring will populate the media field. MSM staffers will find new careers as valet car parkers, parking cars at upscale restaurants.. like the NYC Parker-Meridian's cafe that serves $1,OOO omlets.

PS i agree... bloggers do not seem to me to have much audience. All internet sources for that matter, are "pull media" requiring folks to tap us up.
Which is too much trouble for millions of Joe Averages. We need "push media" like AAR desperately.

Internet Pull media will not replace MSM very easily or fast. Eventually, yes, when things get like the thirties. Hope we can avoid all that.
Push media like AAR can replace MSM much faster than internet media.

form free YahooGroups forums, to have folks in your town who want AAR, to have a "place" to organize and lobby to get AAR into your un-serviced town.

place tiny one line ads in local alt weekly papers, telling of AAR

include aar in your Will

lobby aflcio and DNC to give grants to AAR for new stations.

[bryant69]

3. Overly optimstic

For one thing, even if the majority of Americans turn to alternate media for news; they will still be watching the mass media for entertainment, and a lot of insidious ideas can be planted that way as well.

For another I don't think that the majority of people are anywhere near ready to give up mainstream news sources.

For a third the blogs and so on are a double edged sword. People will self select what view points and news sources they want. I might select Atrios and Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos and Newsdesk.org for my news, while Joe Conservative vists Powerline and Little Green Footballs and Townhall and Newsmax. How does that convince anybody? Indeed we could find ourselves in a situation where we aren't even talking the same language politically speaking.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[SteppingRazor]

4. Of course we need mainstream media.

Blogs lack the infrastructure, in many cases the know-how, the boots on the ground, and, in the end, the cash, to pursue serious investigative journalism on a consistent basis.
Consistent being the operative word. I don't doubt a blog may occasionally expose Jeff Gannon or drop the Lewinsky bomb, but even those stories were further developed by the media. Until blogs have the dollars and personnel to do live, streaming coverage of Iraq, they won't replace the media.
Of course, maybe that day is right around the corner...

[personman]

6. Hmm...

I think if the media(I mean the mainstream crap by the way) can't or won't be reformed, then we don't need it anymore. If they aren't part of the solution they are part of the problem, they need to quit f***ing being part of the problem. If it wasn't for the media it's quite possible this asshole would never have got in to office in the first place, and maybe if they did their job they'd have cut through the BS spin that got him "re-elected".

I can't even watch MSM without bitching at my TV, so I just don't anymore. I do visit cnn.com sometimes, but it's definitely not my main source of news.

By the way, if you have Dish Network, channel 9415 is Free Speech TV. They show a lot of documentaries and things you just don't see on what is supposed to be the real news. Watching FSTV for 2 days, I saw more footage on the ground in Iraq then I have in years of watching MSM.
The only time MSM shows Iraq is when they are showing soldiers carrying guns, they almost never actually go around talking to the citizens, or showing how their daily life is right now. Thing like Iraqis with wounded family members trying to find a hospital that will/can help them. Some truly heart breaking stuff that the American people should know about. Personally I feel as Americans we have a responsibility to face what we're doing over there.

OK I'm done ranting, thanks. :)

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. reform. Too many ppl out there don't read blogs

[0rganism]

8. We need more media more than ever

We need such diversity media that the words "mainstream" could no longer be applied.

While I'm dead set against the latter option, I'm also not sold on the former. I'm not at all sure that the existing media could be reformed, so we must create parallel information and entertainment flows.

[LightningFlash]

9. Don't need the media anymore.

We have our own media bursting forth thousands of miles per second.

[OrlandoGator]

10. This is what I think.

Although the notion that blogs and MSM are symbiotic is interesting.

:kick: