The other day my neighbor handed me this article from NYU Sociologist Eric Klinenberg in the March/April Mother Jones magazine. Here’s the headline/byline:
Breaking the News: It’s not the Internet that’s killing newspapers. It’s the equity-chasing investors and their friends at the FCC who have put outsize profits before a free press.
This piece is excellent – it most likely stems from Klinenberg’s new book Fighting For Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media. I haven’t read it yet, but it seems to encapsulate a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, which is incorporating ethnographic research and media analysis to form a basis for institutional media critique. I need to find out who else is doing this, but clearly Klinenberg is a master in this area. I heard him interviewed on Bob McChesney’s Media Matters radio program, he described the goal of book is to
turn media consolidation from an abstraction into the kind of thing we recognize as affecting our lives. No matter how many times we see those charts of media ownership that show how 5 or 6 companies dominate the system and own lots and lots of subsidiaries, a key challenge for those who care about this issue is to tell human stories about it that really resonate, especially with people who aren’t already convinced that there’s a problem. The kind of media system that we have deprives us of these stories, so we need to find a way to get them told.
Here is where qualitative approaches – ethnographic works – get at the heart of issues like media ownership and telecom policy that can seem so far removed from everyday life.
This is a model to emulate…
Related to Klinenberg’s book, you may want to read these reviews that note the problems with his analysis of the Minot incident,
http://www.slate.com/id/2157395
and circumstances outside of his control since the book was written,
“But the media landscape has changed radically in just the past year, and Klinenberg bears little blame for having written an incomplete account.
Here’s a partial list of recent upheavals since he wrote his book: Viacom split in two. Clear Channel is selling its TV stations and one-third of its radio stations. The New York Times sold its TV stations. The Knight Ridder newspaper chain dissolved. Tribune sold TV stations and may yet be broken up. Walt Disney sold its radio stations. Emmis Communications sold its TV stations. Wave after wave of deconsolidation.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/22/AR2007022201507.html
I do some consulting with the NAB on the media ownership issue. Lost in this debate is the fact that the so called “media giants” are indeed selling off their assets and not engaging in consolidation.
Additionally, the plight of local broadcasters under the current yet antiquated ownership rules is often ignored. The FCC must consider the dramatic changes in the media marketplace that have put the ability of local broadcasters to continue providing free programming in jeopardy. Thanks.
Comment by Chris — March 12, 2007 @ 12:50 pm
Chris, thanks for these articles. I see your point about the Minot situation becoming a “poster child” reference for a certain crowd. I’m interested to hear more about the actual reasons for the deconsolidation mentioned in the Post article.
Again, I still need to read his book, but I think part of Klinenberg’s argument is that unrealistic profit expectations from shareholders factors into the current deconsolidation. At least some of why the Trib company was put up for sale was that it was failing to earn 25% profit margins, right? Are these the changes in the media marketplace you mentioned? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
Comment by crain — March 12, 2007 @ 11:05 pm
crain, thanks for your response. When I mentioned changes in the marketplace, I was mostly referring to the explosion of online and digital media. The media marketplace seems to be changing at an exponential rate and would even be unfamiliar to someone from five years ago. Luckily we have more options than ever, with seemingly unlimited number of blogs, message boards, networking sites not to mention cable and satellite TV and radio expanding. With these developments, “traditional media” outlets, particularly individual local broadcasters are left at a severe competitive disadvantage.
To cite Frank Ahrens again,
“Klinenberg describes how activists successfully petitioned a federal court to block the FCC’s attempt to further relax ownership rules in 2003, but the petition didn’t cause the corporate breakups. Citizens exercise their greatest power when they act as a market, which they did by choosing new media over old. Old-style media empires — radio, TV, newspapers — no longer have the eyeballs to support the kind of audience scale that justified ’90s consolidation and so alarmed media activists. Why? Because of MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, satellite radio, XBox, iPods, et al.”
Comment by Chris — March 13, 2007 @ 10:39 am
Chris, I see where you are coming from when you say traditional media outlets have a competitive disadvantage because of new media. If I am correct, this fuels the argument that the ownership laws are outdated that say, for instance, newspapers and broadcast TV stations cannot have the same parent in a single market.
But the concern here is that if broadcasters and newspapers start to combine in the name of market advantage, what happens to the overall diversity of viewpoints in the media for a given location? Newsrooms shrink in the name of efficiency and, as a result of single ownership, there is a smaller range of opinions overall, right?
I love online media and I think it has real value and tremendous potential, but blogs and message boards are not replacements for journalism and I don’t know if they ever will be.
Comment by crain — March 15, 2007 @ 2:30 pm