BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
03 Jun 2008

I think the 2000s will mark the decade that mainstream media became less important, and taken less seriously.

In the first half of the decade, it was American media’s failure to question the Iraq war.  That is a matter we will leave for our political blog.

The second half of the decade created another challenge for MSM: faced with an onslaught from blogs, competitive pressure on their business, newspapers stopped doing any kind of real investigative journalism and decided to protect the one advantage they have over new media, and that is access.

Take business reporters.  I have a world of respect for traditional media and journalists, but what this YHOO case demonstrated was that journalists traded in their investigative hats for the coddler role.  Go back to 90% of the stuff you would read in WSJ, NYT, etc. etc., and ultimately, I saw a series of writers seeking to show off how great their sources were and not once call out Jerry Yang and the Board for their borderline (if not outright) criminal behavior.

Much the same way that any politico journalist who asked tough questions lost access to the President and his posse, I think a lot of the journalists with access to YHOO and its board were afraid to lose the one edge they had over new media and bloggers and they dropped the ball.

The only thing that disgusts me more than that is YHOO’s behavior… I’d like to see what some of the thinkers who cover journalism have to say about this.