Mass media critique

The New York Times is running an article today about the apparent hoopla in the blogosphere today over the poor questions posed to the Democratic Presidential candidates during the debate last night on ABC. The liberal media elitists like to claim that they are not elitist, but their own words betray them. Phrases such as this one in the article: "No disrespect to bloggers, but the issue has grown to the point where even big media names are weighing in via blog posts, too." say one thing - we do disrespect the average Joe Blogger.

First of all, this style of writing a sentence to show the importance of how the blogosphere is influencing all levels of the media today is written poorly. It is not a fluid sentence, and the non-fluidity of the sentence is not done for dramatic effect. It is simply a poorly constructed sentence.

Second, if they really meant no disrespect to bloggers, then they wouldn't need to preface their assertion about the big media being involved as a negative. This makes me suspect - especially coming from the NY Times - that they do, in fact, hold the simpletons of the blogosphere in contempt for their audacity to horn in on the enlightened ones' territory.

I did not see the debate, nor do I really care much about which Democratic leader is nominated to lead the 2008 Presidential race ticket for the Democrats because I think they're both bad choices for the Democrats to front for their ticket this election. I am capable though of commenting on this media fight between citizen media - the blogosphere - and big media because I believe that this highlights a failure to accept, adapt to, or deal with change in a positive manner on the part of big media companies. They want to protect their profits, which is understandable, but profits are never guaranteed. Insulting part of your most rabid audience for the services and information you provide is not good business policy. It is also not good business policy to be ignorant of things you could learn from your customers so that you might develop new ways to serve them better at a price they're willing to pay for such service.

Perhaps big media will begin listening to their customers soon, but I expect that their own ὕβρις will ultimately cause their marginalization, thereby allowing new and more exciting businesses to take their place. This would be great for the economy in the long run, but will our politicians listen to THEIR customers, or continue on in their own similar ὕβρις? Sadly, I vote for continued self-delusion by both groups.