Changing of the guards: The rise of new “mainstream” media
One article after another makes me believe that many blogs are or soon will be the “mainstream” media. Many articles have been written in the past about the influence of the blogosphere on the traditional mainstream media. I remember reading articles about how many journalists read blogs, how many stories originate as a blog post and how blogs keep stories alive for days and weeks.
But now, instead of blogs influencing the mainstream media, the blogs are becoming the “mainstream” media.
One of the reasons they are undergoing this change, is the fact that the traditional media are dying: “The newspaper industry has experienced the worst drop in advertising revenue in more than 50 years,” reported Jennifer Saba in Editor & Publisher. “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,” she writes.
And if blogs are becoming the mainstream media, are they also changing the way they are run and operated? It seems so:
Just today, Erick Shonfeld wrote on TechCrunch: “Media is changing—how it is produced and how it is consumed. The worlds of blogging and journalism are colliding. [...] Some people question whether TechCrunch is even a blog anymore rather than a professional media site. But that distinction is becoming increasingly meaningless. The truth is that we are both.”
Josh Quittner of Fortune recently wrote: “[Michael Arrington's (founder of TechCrunch)] problem is that the nature of what he does is changing. “Blogs,” he says, “are starting to go the way of mainstream media.” All the successful blogs are starting to take on the trappings of the very thing they disdain. Sites that started out as tiny operations – titles like ReadWrite Web, Mashable, GigaOm, and Silicon Alley Insider – have staffed up and are turning into small businesses. Arrington himself employs ten people.”
So, next time you reach out to bloggers, be prepared to face a structure that will more remind you of the mainstream media, because that might be exactly who you are talking to.
