"Provocative Paranoia" of 2.0 Pays Off In Spades

No doubt, blogging has become the standalone tool for up-and-coming journalists and media critics to jumpstart their careers by blazing a trail online. Because of this, the blogosphere is thriving as a vibrant and dynamic patchwork of media musings, observation, and news analysis.

The spectrum rolls wide: There's incisive commentary, vapid criticism, innovative writing, false reporting, nuanced gossiping, quirky news gathering, and more, much of which has the ability to disseminate at brushfire speed. It’s information democracy.

Still, many an old media partisan holds a staunch fealty to the tenants of a journalism that is no longer, discrediting the merits of online with off-putting, chip-on-the-shoulder contempt.

Which is why I was elated to read mediabistro's interview of John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist. After some interesting insights, Micklethwait buoyantly announces that, as opposed to other newsweeklies which have been blindsided by the advent of online, The Economist has actually fared quite well with the rising tide of digital. Here’s a snippet of what he had to say:

“We remain provocatively paranoid about the Internet; you have to be thinking of ways in which you can deal with it. When I first came on I thought of the Internet as this sort of hurricane coming right towards us that had already hit newspapers and now would come to magazines, which were further ashore. But now it seems to be sort of glancing magazines, rather than hitting directly. It's not true for all magazines -- there are some that have been hit quite badly -- but the sort of thing that we're doing at the moment seems to be helping us rather than hurting us, because it's putting so much more information out there.”

In seven years, as the explosion of Web 2.0 has caused many a print publication to tumble, The Economist has managed to increase magazine sales by 107 percent—all thanks to an aggressive (if belated) courting of the digital space.

This sends a powerful message to old media advocates, one that many Internets have been toting with aplomb for a long time now: Embrace digital, or face an agonizing death... Yes?

Television News Rolls Way Off the Tracks

I was watching CNN last night for the first time in about four months, thinking about how much I used to enjoy television before the digital space seduced me oh-so-deliciously, when I realized just how dorky the anchors on this cable news network really are.

I know most people have beef with the in-your-face attitude of the Fox News correspondents, but at least it seems like they have something important to say, and they’re not two-faced about their political slant. The delivery of the CNN folks just doesn’t cut it for me; it comes off as hypocritical. And the news! It’s a joke.

I was actually plugging away at my laptop and wasn't particularly interested at what was coming from the screen last night, but I did manage to capture a little of the awkward banter that was exchanged so profusely by the talking heads during Anderson Cooper 360.

There was some chitchat about a high-priced hybrid cat for sale in California (okay...), and then the show ended with the silver-haired anchor urging users to send in v-mails, because at CCN, they not only like to read our opinions, they love seeing us, too. How Web 2.0. Whatever. This could have passed for innovative like 5 years ago, maybe.

Then it was time for Larry King Live. Ok, I’ll stay tuned, I thought. I was too busy crafting an e-mail to change the channel. To my utter dismay, the guest was “CNN’s own” Lou Dobbs. Snap.

I need to call a time out here and let you guys know how much I hate this guy. He’s been the bête noire of television news for the past few years, at least for me. I try never to watch his show; it’s bad for my liver. I find him a doughy, thinly-veiled bigot--a man who claims to stand for “American” ideals of days gone by, or of days that never were. He spews gruff condescension and touts an inward-looking, nationalistic doctrine that irresponsibly dismisses the powerful forces currently shaping the world that he so blindly decries. And, he had the audacity to proclaim that his viewers never disagree with him. Right.

Television news is blowing chunks at epic proportions. Lou Dobbs can bite it, for all I care. My last hope for television news was CNN, but now I realize that even this network has become too self-serving for its own good. It’s no longer about news—it’s about self-promotion, ego pandering, and needless filler. Maybe I’ll try BBC News next time. Which is when I decided: No one’s forcing me to watch this. Time to turn it off.

I went for the remote and quickly zapped away the noise coming from my TV, and then contentedly dived back online.