Misunderestimating the Competition

Wow, does the mainstream media actually think their competition and evolution is Facebook and MySpace?

A few old schoolers still like to insist that Daily Kos and the Democratic Underground are the best of the bloggers.

It is these delusions that have undermined and destroyed the mainstream media's authority and credibility -- of knowing absolutely nothing about what they are talking about anymore, and how they are still central to the old mass media model as the information/communication middle men.

The most knowledgeable people speak for themselves -- instead of being controlled and interpreted to mean whatever the reporter (intermediary) wants them to mean. That's why the old mainstream media failed -- because their reporters couldn't compete with all the knowledgeable people speaking and reading for themselves, instead of through the garbled lens and understanding of reporters trying to make a name for themselves at every opportunity.

Some people are good at seeing things clearly and communicating it to others -- that transcend the traditional monopolies on knowledge. That's why we witnessed the rise of those who created new worlds beyond the conventional wisdom that required them to learn and repeat what was known and done before -- by the experts and authorities who transmitted only the previously known.

Even mainstream media no longer consulted those authorities on what used to be thought true and is going on -- but actually self-designated/promoted themselves instead as the authoritative sources, which is fine, except they couldn't withstand the challenge of their own readership.

They were undone in their own forums -- and not in the Facebook pages, and rather than the old coming back into fashion and restoring their former glory, prominence, and jobs, information communications have evolved beyond that.

There's no going back to the days when the entire journalism profession reads the columns written in the New York Times or Washington Post, and everybody else in the countless small town newspapers, plagiarizes and reiterates the political correctness of the day as though they thought of it themselves.

The Internet is the universe of what is being thought and published -- as the cosmic/collective consciousness of these times -- and not that it is a Facebook page competing against the almighty old media hoping to be regarded as the new and the news again.