Hegemonic Struggle And The Firing Of Dan Froomkin | 31 comments
Um, the WaPo & Co. are firing themselves (4.00 / 5)
Readership, subscriptions, revenue, ad revenue, etc., are all going down, and not only because of the internet. A lot of it has to do with the growing sense that the establishment media (NOT the "traditional" media, unless one believes that dishonesty, mediocrity and mendacity are traditional values) is simply not doing its job as well as it used to. Not that it was ever superb, but it's gotten worse in recent years and readers have started to go elsewhere for their news. Or, more accurately, readers have started to go everywhere and anywhere for their news, and the WaPo has become a commodity, not a brand name any longer, read via links on aggregator sites like the Huff Post, TPM or Drudge, or blogs.

I think that this is where the mainstream news industry is headed, as an originator of news and other content that newer, aggregator sites will then either include or link to, and on a per-article basis, not a syndication basis. I.e. you'll only be as good as your individual writers and stories, and your brand name will count for much less than it used to. If readers like Krauthammer, then he'll be widely distributed. If they view him as the crackpot delittante nutjob that he is, then he'll be consigned to the shitcan of history, or published only on secondary RW outlets, on a subsidized basis, like Schlaffly and Thomas.

Same for writers like Froomkin, for whom I believe there will be a broad audience because he actually produces quality journalism, not pre-fab establishment or wingnut crap written to a preconceived narrative. He was rejected by the old news media model, but the old news media model is dying, so they probably did him a favor, short-term pain notwithstanding. He will thrive under the new model, which I expect to predominate within 5 years. It'll go from today's highly vertical model to a flatter model, and outlets like WaPo will either adapt, by effectively splitting into content creation and content distribution divisions, or die.

In any case, I'm not surprised that he was fired, just as MSNBC fired Donahue and Banfield and the LAT fired Scheer. what next, the NYT fires Bob Herbert, because he's "too divisive"? Won't matter in the long run, as the monolithic control that the establishment media has over who gets published is going away. It'll be the garage startup or band model, applied to the news business, enabled by technology. And Froomkin & Co. will thrive in it.

The liberal soul shall be made fat. He who waters shall be watered also himself. (Proverbs 11:25)

Yes, They're Decaying (4.00 / 1)
But that doesn't automatically mean something positive will replace them.  (Look at the present conservadem dominance in Congress having replaced The Hammer's domain.)  That's at least part of what I meant to direct attention towards.

Plus there's the fact that the Moonie-owned Washington Times has been losing money faster than AIG since its founding 1983, yet it's managed to function as an effective rightwing battering ram all that time.  It seems clear that the Washington Post has a long way to fall to before it enters Washington Times, so it can still wreck considerable havoc as it tacks ever more sharply to the right.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent | ]
We're in a period of transition and transformation (0.00 / 0)
No one knows where it's headed. And sure, the current congressional majority isn't as big of an improvement over the previous one as we had hope and clearly need, but one, it's not as bad as the previous one, so there is some improvement, and two, it may well be too unstable to last very long. Will it move leftward? Will it fail and enable a RW restoration? Or will it coalesce more or less along its present centrist lines, with some progressive aspects (such as those that led to SCHIP), and some conservative ones (such as those that led to the Iran resolution), that most of the time split the difference (as with the stim bill)? No one knows. But I wouldn't necessarily bet on the status quo staying as is. It just seems too unstable to me, and there are trends pulling in either direction.

If it does go back to the right, it'll only be because Obama and Dems were too weak and unimaginative, which will lead to them failing. Which is why I believe that they need to go left, not just for policy reasons, but for political ones as well. They are being unbelievably stupid in their conservative caution, and not just unprincipled. The public wants and needs progressive change, and if they don't get it, they might well rebel and hand the GOP another chance, which will run under the banner of "Real Reform at Last!".

As for the news biz, well, I think that change will come sooner and bigger than many realize, and that a lot is happening out of sight that will make it so. The vertical model will be superceded by the flat model, and producers of less popular content who are already weighed down by costly distribution models will have to adapt or disappear, as purchasers and redistributors of content, with much lower operating costs and better technology, will take over. I can't imagine that Google and Microsoft aren't hard at work on this right now, hoping to become the new news and media giants, allowing the popularity of content to determine who and what gets published, not editorial bias. Of course, much of this will be TMZ-style crap. But some will be of high quality, and I expect that high-quality reporting will find a ready audience, and drive the low-quality kind further to the margins.

The liberal soul shall be made fat. He who waters shall be watered also himself. (Proverbs 11:25)

[ Parent | ]
I Believe (4.00 / 1)
Chris made a very strong argument for how we can make real gains in progressive governance in his diary Friday, "The Progressive Block".

Whether that comes to fruition or not is another matter.  But it does point to a very plausible strategy.

I'd like to see us do that same on the media front.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent | ]
On the political front (0.00 / 0)
I don't think that a progressive block is enough. See how we lost the FISA fight despite having such a block in both houses. And the progressive caucus has been unsuccessfully trying to end the war for years without success. What we need is a working political coalition between a progressive block on our side and a libertarian block on the other side, e.g. people like Paul, Flake, Jones, etc. Because I believe that Obama, Pelosi and Reid will not hesitate to find votes on the other side to make up for missing votes on their side.

Obama has long since set the stage for this rhetorically--by design, I believe--with his endless calls for bipartisanship. That wasn't just a wish, but a promise. He was, I think, telling the left to either play ball or GF themselves. I really do believe that. He's a "kiss up, kick down" sort of politician, not just weak in a Clintonian sense but unprincipled in a Hoyer sort of way--he likes to cut easy deals that please the rich and powerful. So politically, I think that we need a "Reform" coalition, consisting of both progressive Dems and libertarian Repubs.

In the media, though, I think that change will come from the private sector, in the form of media startups and ventures. Progressive can certainly help this along, by producing as much high-quality news and opinion content as possible, and by creating as many new think tanks and "idea co-ops" as possible, where subject matter experts can collaborate to put out first-rate policy and idea papers. But ultimately, improving the news industry will largely be a market-based undertaking, I believe. Which isn't necessarily inconsistent with progressive action, as a lot of affluent people in the media happen to be progressive.

The liberal soul shall be made fat. He who waters shall be watered also himself. (Proverbs 11:25)

[ Parent | ]
You Need To Re-Read Chris's Diary (4.00 / 1)
You're not responding to his argument.

Plus, there's no there there in the way of a libertarian block to ally with.  Paul is often a party of one.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent | ]
Sure there is (0.00 / 0)
The bailout bill got a lot of pushback from a certain segment of the right, and between them and enough Dems, they killed the first iteration. But Pelosi didn't need them in the end, as there weren't enough Dems who broke with her to defeat it on the second round. But there's a contingent of Repubs who, with progressives, can get together to block certain bills. They might be the crazies on the right, but you take what you can get.

Broadly speaking, there are basically two kinds of Repubs, the crazies and the crooks, just as there are two kinds of Dems, the progressives and the corporatists (which is a nicer way of saying crook, because if you take money from a corporation and then push bills that help that corporation, you are a crook). The Repub crooks will sometimes side with Dems on certain bills, but if enough progressive Dems and crazy Repubs get together, they could block some of them. Like a bad health care bill. Or, had they tried hard enough, last week's supplemental "emergency" war bill. Such a working block has a certain surreal aspect to it, since we're talking the likes of Barbara Lee voting with the likes of Michelle Bachman. But hey, politics and bedfellows. You take what you can get.

The liberal soul shall be made fat. He who waters shall be watered also himself. (Proverbs 11:25)

[ Parent | ]
That Wasn't A Libertarian Vote (4.00 / 1)
That was grandstanding rightwing populism.  When it happens, and we can take advantage of it, great.  But it's not dependable in any sort of strategic sense.



"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent | ]
Obama (4.00 / 1)
He's a "kiss up, kick down" sort of politician

my view precisely, one reason he and Rahm get along so well

[ Parent | ]
The moonie times (0.00 / 0)
is NOT a publicly held corporation.

At some point the fact the people don't want the product will matter. But it is really a shame because there are many worker bee reporters at the Washington Post who are doing great work.

[ Parent | ]
And they should be well paid for it (0.00 / 0)
I fully expect vanity, advocacy and trash news outlets to continue to exist, even if they lose money. They have an audience and will always find some source of funding, because the people who fund them view them as ideological and policy investments, or as a way to feel important and powerful with grandaddy's money. And they don't all lose money. Isn't Fox profitable? There will always be idiots and nuts who like that sort of crap.

And yes, I realize that many of us are related to them. Oh well.

But serious outlets putting out serious journalism will thrive too, if there's a source for it--and there clearly is--and a paying audience for it, which I believe there also is. I'm guessing that the most affluent segments of the population also tend to be the ones that are most interested in and willing to pay for quality journalism. Smart new media owners will figure out a way to re-connect the two and make a good profit producing and selling good content.

The liberal soul shall be made fat. He who waters shall be watered also himself. (Proverbs 11:25)

[ Parent | ]
Yes, but we need to really support our journalists (4.00 / 2)
Firing Froomkin might have done him a favor by moving him to the new model where he will be better respected and supported by editors. But we need to somehow pay our journalists a reasonable salary and give them the support they need to do quality research and reporting. The blogosphere cannot even begin to match what the Washington Post provides in that realm.

[ Parent | ]
I never said that content will be free (0.00 / 0)
It won't, and it shouldn't necessarily be. The flatter model that I described could and certainly should pay high-quality journalists like Froomkin well for their work. And they will have to, because an aggregator will have to pay for content to distribute it. And journalists and other writers will probably work for content creation companies or co-ops that will pay them well for their work, to have something of quality to sell.

Of course, even if this happened, sooner or later the flat model will become vertical once again. That always happens. But it'll be under new management, with different priorities and biases, that hopefully won't be as in thrall to the political establishment as is now the case with the establishment media. But that's probably years down the line, and good media consolidation legislation could prevent things from returning to their present awful state.

The liberal soul shall be made fat. He who waters shall be watered also himself. (Proverbs 11:25)

[ Parent | ]
Froomkin (0.00 / 0)
Froomkin won't thrive if he has a pre-existing condition. He may get a new job, even one that pays as well as the Washington Post. But even if he gets a job with health insurance, he won't be covered for his pre-existing conditions.

One more example of why we need single payer. We need health care not health insurance!

[ Parent | ]
Hegemonic Struggle And The Firing Of Dan Froomkin | 31 comments
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