Platforms need the news — but they’re killing it

We’ve been talking a batch this twelvemonth astir the changing internet, and what it’s doing to the media ecosystem — peculiarly journalism, which has taken a backseat to creator and influencer media crossed virtually each platform. But the platforms themselves person a batch of power implicit what those creators and influencers marque arsenic well.

If you’re a regular Decoder listener, you’ll admit this arsenic a taxable we travel backmost to a batch — the thought that the mode we administer media straight influences the media we make. Media student Marshall McLuhan famously summed this up as, “the mean is the message” — a large thought that shapes the full satellite astir us.

Without question, our mean — and our messages — are dominated by large platforms, which administer the immense bulk of accusation to the public. Over the past decade, publishers of journalism person mostly ceded each of their organisation to Facebook, Google Search, and now, short-form video platforms similar TikTok.

That means a batch of our media ecosystem is driven algorithmic proposal systems which thin to favour quantity implicit prime — and that’s created a quality ecosystem that allows influencers and aggregators to instrumentality the worth created by archetypal journalism and maximize it for an algorithmic assemblage that doesn’t truly cognize wherever that accusation archetypal came from and astir apt doesn’t care. 

Last month, successful the aftermath of Donald Trump’s electoral victory, media professional and national president Matt Pearce, who represents the Media Guild of the West, wrote a peculiarly bully blog station connected the subject. It’s aptly called, “Lessons connected media argumentation astatine the slaughter-bench of history.” In that post, Matt laid retired alternatively succinctly why, successful his words, “America’s accusation system is rotten from apical to bottom, starting with the integer infrastructure that stands betwixt prime journalism and the public.” I work that, and I thought, “Yeah, we’ve gotta get Matt connected the show.”

So I invited Matt connected the amusement to speech astir that piece, astir the improvement of journalism successful the integer age, and astir what — if thing — tin beryllium done successful the aboriginal to guarantee quality outlets tin inactive pass the nationalist and, importantly, past financially. We get into what mechanisms tin and should beryllium utilized to money autarkic journalism, and however gathering a nonstop assemblage and exercising power implicit organisation is much important contiguous than it’s ever been.

If you’d similar to bash immoderate much speechmaking connected the topics we talked about, cheque retired these links: