I’d like to speculate…

The newspapers really dislike you… well, most of you… the ones that have websites and blogs and such.

In fact, the traditional print media, as a whole, sees you as a threat – as competition. And many of you are. You write far wittier, more astute and produce more relevant copy than they can… and then you give it away, for free.

I can understand why they are threatened. It’s hard to lose a monopoly.

It’s also hard to lose at monopoly, but that’s another story…

The thing I don’t understand though is how they try to cope with this threat. Rather than embracing the new media and involving it in their business, they prefer to react with name calling. For a start, they coined the terms ‘traditional media’ and ‘new media’ as if in some way this is like ‘Coke’ and ‘New Coke’. Still, I can’t think of better terms, so I’ll let that go…

1. You’re not professionally trained

True, although it’s not like you are attempting brain surgery. This part comes from believing that somehow journalism is difficult and that you have to spend many years working towards being able to tell people what your opinion is, or to report some facts.

2.  You’re biased

And newspapers aren’t? It’s no secret that the owners of most traditional media outlets are in it for the power. They’re not exactly sharing the news out of the goodness of their hearts. Some evidence of this is the fact that many newspapers run at a loss – why else would a businessman hold on to something that loses money?

3. Traditional media employs editors to correct copy and check facts

This may be true, but it doesn’t stop some terrible typos and some rather incorrect ‘facts’ from being published. This sort of links in with the first point – if professional training is so important, why is it that you need someone to spell-check a document for you? I know bloggers occasionally make a mistake, I do it all the time, especially where punctuation is concerned, but the truth is that I’m the only person to read my copy before it gets published. For a newspaper, a typical article gets read by at least three people, and anything in a book is usually read by four… you really shouldn’t have any mistakes at all.

As for checking facts, again, I could understand this accusation if the newspapers printed only the truth. Speculation it seems is a good way to fill a few pages. Follow that with opinion and you have two get-out clauses for printing fiction. Failing that you can settle out of court to maintain your integrity, should an ‘error’ occur.

4. You’re putting people out of jobs

Apparently, paid film critics have been hit the most since us bloggers will actually pay to watch a film and then let everyone know what we thought of it. And this links in with point number two – if you are getting paid to review something, you already have a vested interest… how can you not be biased? I’d rather trust a critic who, like me has had to hand over their hard earned cash for the pleasure as opposed to someone who gets to see films for free on a regular basis. The same goes for restaurant critics too – I’m sorry but your free-loading days are over, you will become extinct if you don’t find a way to change.

…

I’d like to speculate further…

I think that what is going on here is the traditional media voicing its fears, not about new media, but about itself. Blogs and websites and such have eroded away their air of authority which, for so long, comforted them about their inadequacies and now they are faced with the realisation that they have provided the groundwork for people like you and I to put them out of business.