STORY OF THE YEAR: The Fall of Mainstream Media, The Rise of the Blogs

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
— The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

For quite some time now, those in the mainstream media would have us believe that the First Amendment created a special office, rights and privileges granted to professional journalists above all others in society -- and not that these rights were granted to every citizen equally. In fact, they believed it even became their exclusive right to suppress and oppress all the others attempting to exercise their freedom of speech, religion. press, assembly and redress -- mainly because Americans tend to be a trusting people, which makes them a great nation. Much can easily be accomplished when there is this mutual trust as the underlying foundation for all conduct, transactions and relations -- until that trust is violated and abused. Then, retribution is swift and decisive.

What became apparent to many, was that the traditional media (newspapers, television, radio, schools, universities, etc.), had become extremely biased and partisan in their reporting and editorializing, as well as inherently deficient and incompetent, and thus destroyed whatever remaining credibility they had with the most discriminating and impartial observers in society -- and when caught time and again, merely redoubled their efforts to assert their superiority and primacy of the control of the public consciousness -- as though it were their exclusive right and jurisdiction.

That right was never granted to anyone exclusively -- and the bloggers were among the first to avail themselves of the current technologies that levels the playing field in the new world of publishing, which means quite simply, publicizing. It’s not the first time there’s been a revolution in this field. Mainstream (broadcast) media, was also a revolution in its time -- and its effectiveness reached its height in propaganda and advertising campaigns, by those who controlled or could afford the machinery.

With the popularity of personal computers, the machinery and requisite skills became boilerplate to those wishing to avail themselves of them. The challenge then became, one’s ability to produce original content and insights, since we had become so dependent on the mediated way of obtaining information -- and were taught to distrust our own judgment in doing so. This required the complicity of the schools and universities, to condition us to the thinking that one could and never should learn on one’s own, but must rely only on duly certified professionals, based on their ability to assimilate the right curricula (political correctness).

These hierarchies and jurisdictions (turf) break down when available to all inexpensively. That is a tremendous challenge and disruption to the status quo and entrenched powers that wish to remain so only when their advantage is permanently guaranteed. But anything that does not change in a changing world is doomed to failure. The weakness of the mainstream media is that it became one mold -- repeated and reaffirmed from the centers of leadership in New York and Washington. That was the epitome of the old model of highly centralized information (news) processing -- that everybody else out in the sticks were expected to mimic -- until ultimately, the line between plagiarizing, paraphrasing, and outright copying became so muddled that the old lines of demarcation could not be maintained and were simply overrun and trampled into dust.

In such chaos and anomie, orderly minds rule -- or at least emerge, take hold, become stronger. They become the new models of communications and information -- unrestricted by the rules of Associated Press language and protocols. "They" began to insist that even blogs must conform to their rules -- so they can remain competitive, when those rules exist to maintain their advantage and preeminence. But that is not the only way the game can be played. That is only the way generations had been taught the game is played -- with a few winners, and mostly also-rans and wannabes for a few coveted spots. Under those rules, one had to pay their dues, and keep paying them, in the hopes that one day, they could be doing what they really wanted to do.

Bloggers just went ahead and did what they wanted to do -- and could imagine doing. For some, it was the usual juvenile antics or self-conscious thrills of self-expression, but once that initial intoxication passed, most realized they had nothing to say of any uniqueness or interest. But a small percentage recognized that the only thing that had limited them previously, was the lack of access to a publishing medium. If that was the limitation, it no longer was one -- and so the world began to explode with blogs.

“Success” could now be determined simply by whatever measure one wanted it to be. To take the conventional approach and try to be as popular as the established players in the game was still prohibitive. However, the perceptive few realized that rather than taking the mass approach, they should instead find their niche audience. The objective then was not to reach merely the largest audience (ineffectively I might add) but to reach the best audience -- including and especially, the most intelligent and discriminating audience. In effect, that was discovering intelligent life here on earth. And that is what the mass media despairs of, “That there is no intelligent life in the universe,” judging from their regard for their readership.

In the year 2005, we saw two ships passing in the night -- going in different directions.