November 1, 2007

Niche-Picking the News

As I mentioned I would last week, I participated in a panel discussion today for the 2007-2008 Leadership Nashville class on its "Nashville Government and Media Day." Also on the panel, moderated by WKRN's Bob Mueller: Nashville Scene editor Liz Garrigan, radio talker Phil Valentine, and Tennessean publisher Ellen M. Leifeld.

It was enjoyable, though frustrating. The discussion's title was "Sorting Out the Voices," but the questions inevitably lead the discussion to the issue of credibility of blogs and the question became "Which is better, newspapers or blogs?."

That's a silly discussion - akin to asking "Which is better, apples or bicycles?"

The answer is, neither one - they're just different.

What I would have liked to tell the Leadership Nashville class is that the need to "sort out the voices" isn't a problem, but a gift - it means that, thanks to technology putting the tools of text, audio and video publishing into the hands of millions of people, there are many - MANY - more voices that can be heard. In a nation whose Bill of Rights in its Constitution starts with a First Amendment that celebrates and protects the right of the people to speak freely, having to sort out the voices should be viewed not as a problem but as a gift from a benevolent God.

Before I was a blogger I was a journalist and I hold good journalism and the people who do it in high regard. I'm a news junkie since the days of Frank Reynolds anchoring ABC News. I love newspapers. I love reading them, and I loved working for them.

I've worked for the Tennessean twice - once, in college, in the "mail room," which has nothing to do with mail and everything to do with inserting flyers into the middle of the papers that are fresh off the press, and the second time as a reporter in the newsroom. I've also worked for the Reporter-News in Abilene, Texas, and the Avalanche-Journal in Lubbock, Texas - and also the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle and the Nashville Business Journal here in Tennessee.

Even walking into the Tennessean building at 1100 Broadway today, smelling the distinctive inky smell that all newspaper buildings have put a smile on my face.

But as much as I love journalism and love newspapers, things aren't like they used to be.

Today, there are still newspapers - and TV news - but there also is talk radio, and blogs.

The era of mass media is over. It's all niche now.

Don't believe me?

Consider this: Titanic is the most popular movie of all time. And yet if you ask any large and demographically diverse group of people to raise their hands if they've seen it, only about 10 percent of the people will raise their hands.

The Tennessean's paid daily circulatiion is about 165,000 copies - in a city of nearly 1.5 million people. And it's the biggest paper in town. NewsChannel5 boasts that it is the "most-watched" local news network, but the truth is that most Nashvillians don't watch NewsChannel5, or any of the three other TV news programs.

Most people don't read blogs, either. One of the most-read blogs in America, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit.com has maybe 100,000 readers a day. In a nation of 300 million people.

As radio talker Phil Valentine noted today, if his show gets a "9 share" in the ratings book, that's considered really good - and yet it means 91 percent of the people of Nashville who have a radio on aren't listening to his show. They're listening to another of the myriad of stations.

The truth is, all media is niche media. Most people don't watch CNN - or Fox News or ABC News or NBC News or CBS News or MSNBC News either. Others can debate whether it is good or bad that there's no single nightly news broadcast watched by the masses anymore the way it was back when Cronkite anchored at CBS. I'm just saying that it is what it is.

Most people don't read the New York Times or the Washington Post or USA Today or Newsweek or Time. Or People magazine, for that matter.

Here in Nashville, there are an abundance of political blogs, but - guess what - most people don't read 'em.

And yet, they can - and do - have an impact. Because they reach a niche audience that matters. They reach politically active and involved people.

Newspapers are a niche media too, and always have been. The typical newspaper is really a collection of niche publications all wrapped together and sold as a single unit. There's the sports page for sports fans, the business section for business types, the entertainment news section for entertainment news junkies, the columns on everything from politics to gardening for people interested in niches like politics or gardening.

Most people don't read everything in a newspaper. They read things that fit their interest niche or niches.

So if all media is niche media - and it is - what should the Leadership Nashville audience understand about that? They should know that - thanks to the explosion in the number of voices, driven largely by the technology-enabled growth of 'citizens' media" like blogs, podcasting and grassroots video on sites like YouTube - it is virtually certain that whatever area of government or public policy any single Leadership Nashville participant is interested in is being discussed by one or more of those voices that we were supposed to talk about "sorting out."

They need to find out where that conversation is taking place and participate in it.

Two years ago, there were about 3,500 separate pieces of legislation filed in the Tennessee General Assembly. Now, no media outlet can report on 3,500 pieces of legislation, and the Tennessee media that covers the legislature chose to cover other issues. They probably reported on no more than 50 pieces of legislation during the entire six-month legislative session.

Newspaper editors and TV news directors have to set priorities. They have to cover the biggest stories first. And so they made their editorial decisions.

But buried amid the uncovered legislation was a bill that aimed to take away from Tennesseans the right they had to reject increases in their county "wheel tax" (car tag fee) via a petition drive and referendum.

To make a long story short, blogs - lead by this one - reported on that legislation, explained what it would do, and exposed that some of the sponsors of the legislation had been mislead by the lobbyist for a county mayors assocation as to what it would do. Over the course of nearly two weeks of reporting on it - by blogs and by talk radio - the sponsors of the legislation melted away and the legislation died. Only after nearly two weeks of blog coverage did a first report appear in a Tennessee newspaper about the legislation - and they reported that the legislation had died. TV, to my knowledge, never covered the story.

While I enjoyed tweaking the media back then for missing a big story, the truth is that a newspaper can't cover everything any more than a blog can. While the news media were missing that story they were covering a lot of stories that bloggers weren't covering. We all pick our niches.

Newspaper and TV journalists all love to write or produce stories that get people talking. And these days, the people are talking - via blogs and podcasts and YouTube and such - about the news. Some are talking about the political news, some are talking about the sports news, and so on.

There isn't one conversation about "the news," there are countless conversations about a myriad of niche subjects within the news - and about stories that aren't in the news, because, in this new Golden Media Age of widely distributed and inexpensive, often free, publishing technologies, ordinary people can play reporter or commentator on stories the news media isn't covering.

The masses are not just talking, they're creating "content," a woefully bland word for the writings and photography and videography that Americans by the millions are producing and publishing online.

The era of mass media is over. All media is niche media, much of it created not by media outlets but by the masses themselves. And that's a good thing. After all, the very concept of "mass media" ought to offend anyone who believes in the concept of a free society where people are individuals with rights and freedoms that include not just the freedom of thought, but also the freedom to decide what news and information one takes in.

Totalitarian systems regulate the flow of information - the elites force the masses to all read and view the same things, so as to control what they know and what they think. That's the ultimate mass media.

But today the masses are using the tools of "citizens media" to flip that paradigm on its head and force the elites to pay attention to what the people are saying.

Mass media is dead. Long live the many, many media of the masses.

But I still love newspapers.