The Internet Revolution 2008

The media evolution accelerates.

The other day I felt a twinge of sadness to see a former Local Buzz box sitting lonely and abandoned on Main Street in Northampton.

This Buzz box in Amherst appears to have been taken over by another publication. 

Now Local Buzz is found exclusively online, where they are doing a great job. Their specialty appears to be the stories other miss, or at least the angle they missed, and often with humorous results. For example, when the Amherst Committee for Excellence sent out a recent letter demanding higher academic standards in the public schools, Local Buzz pointed out that they appeared to have less than excellent standards for their own writing.

As I said before, Local Buzz is lucky to have been banished to cyberspace. It's a bit like being banished to Beverly Hills, that's where you should want to be anyway. The importance of focusing on cyberspace over all other media platforms was reinforced by this news item released last week:

According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 — the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.

Internet ad revenue in 2007 grew 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006.

So advertising on cyberspace is soaring at the same time it is plummeting in print media. You don't have to have a crystal ball to conclude that if the trend of ten percent losses per year continue, then print media has a life expectancy of less than a decade. I doubt print will fade quite that quick but either today's print publications establish themselves as companies making the bulk of their money online or they'll be in real danger of going out of business.

That's why every print publication that wants to survive long term needs to make their webpage their number one priority. The only primary purpose their printed version now serves is to finance their transition to the net. But that revenue is falling fast, so speed is of the essence.

What's interesting is that the traditional media didn't see and react to their impending demise sooner. The internet dates back to the 1960's when the government first developed the basic concept for military purposes. The idea was that there would need to be a way to communicate after all the telephone poles and radio towers had been knocked down in a nuclear war. If computers could interconnect, forming a world wide net, then communication would still be theoretically possible even after they dropped the Big One.

As it turned out, the nukes were never dropped, but the internet the military helped create found its uses. The first onboard, not surprisingly, were the scientists, who found that it was easier and faster to communicate with their colleagues around the world by mailing them electronically via the internet than by the post office. E-mail made it possible to unite the scientific community as never before.

Next onboard were the extremists - the Nazi's, the Maoists, the Flat Earthers and other kooks who couldn't get their message out any other way. It become apparent that this medium, which was global and therefore not restricted by the laws of any government, could be a platform for ideas that could find no expression elsewhere.

One of the most desired and restricted commodities is sex, and the unregulated internet became fertile ground for something that had previously been widely taboo - pornography. In fact you could actually sell it online. Some people hate to admit it, but the first successful business model online was the distribution and selling of pornography.

Despite all the scientific knowledge, extremist politics and hot porn to be found online, the audience for it all remained very small. The problem was you had to be a real geek to access any of it. The hardware was expensive, but the real barrier was that carrying out the simplest commands required the typing of lengthy codes. The average person was never going to get that geeky in order to come online.

Enter Bill Gates and his Windows. Some critics complain that he stole the software from companies he drove out of business, but the truth is that however he got it, Gates revolutionized the internet by replacing the lengthy command codes with simple icons you could click on. That meant that even a child could go online and do sophisticated research or create new content. Windows meant that cyberspace was no longer a restricted zone where only the technologically sophisticated could go. Cyberspace was for everybody.

The late 1990's and early 2000's were essentially a period in which the colonization of cyberspace by regular people occurred. For the first time there was a real audience out there of millions of normal consumers and average citizens that you reach online. It was discovered that you could make good money online, selling everything from books to refrigerators. You could also raise money for political campaigns easier than ever before and could reach the electorate with low-cost candidate webpages and ads.

But the real revolutionary possibilities lie in mass media. For one, the internet was not just another new addition to the media marketplace - instead it was the ultimate media. You could watch it, like TV. You could read it, like a newspaper or magazine. You could hear it like a radio. The internet is all known forms of media rolled into one. How could something so obviously superior to any other media outlet not succeed?

Yet the economic model online is much the same. Newspapers, TV and radio stations all make their money the same way. They offer material they feel will attract an audience, and then sell access to that audience to advertisers. It is the same in cyberspace. He who gets the most hits can charge the highest price and make the most money, exactly as it is today in traditional media.

So why was traditional media caught so flat-footed by the migration to cyberspace? Part of it is that the media profession was let down by the people who should have been on top of these changes. A certain Luddite mentality prevailed that was partly the result of journalism schools who were staffed by technological illiterates. They wasted their student's money by training them for a newsroom that no longer exists. 

The editors and managers in traditional media also failed to react in time because they were blinded by the traditions and status of their positions. The internet has made everyone a potential news reporter, radio jock or video star. Old media just didn't know how to react to this democratization of mass media access that had previously been reserved for a credentialed elite. "Who are these amateurs?" they cried, not recognizing the people who used to be called their audience.

Fortunately, there is little for any current traditional media writer to fear about these changes. Anyone who can gather useful information and present it to an audience in a clear and concise way will always be in demand. In fact, there are more opportunities for writers online then there ever was in traditional media. For the most talented, cyberspace offers a chance to be free of corporate control and be liberated from the restrictions of working for a boss. If you've got the talent, go out and make your own audience and then cash in on ads. No good writer needs to work for a company anymore if they don't want to.

But before that can happen, the old media has to admit to itself that its day of print dominance is almost done, and that cyberspace offers them their best hope for survival. So far they seem determined to try to milk their old technology of printing presses and broadcasting towers to the bitter end, and for them the end may indeed be bitter.


Wow, I can't believe that my friend Hwei-Ling Greeney was defeated for re-election yesterday in the Amherst town election! It must have been that picture on her website of her posing with a zombie-like John Kerry that did her in!

The other candidate I supported, Stephanie O'Keefe, won but now everyone tells me I made a mistake because she's a flaming liberal. Perhaps I should have consulted Boss Kelley first. Here is O'Keefe looking like Big Brother in this Mary Carey photo.

Oh well, I supported O'Keefe because she was a pioneering blogger. Therefore if she is a flaming liberal, then hopefully she will be a transparent, blogging flaming liberal. It's a bad omen however, that her blog appears to be dead.