Posted on 09/23/2007 8:05:31 AM PDT by shove_it
The twentieth century was the high point of mass cultureor the overculture as some call it. Any culture that could produce Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and The Honeymooners cant be all bad.
But eventually, the connection between media elites and their audiences began to fracture. Though apocryphal, the line frequently attributed to Pauline Kael of the New Yorker in 1972 sums up the growing chasm between the overcultureparticularly the mediaand its audience: I dont know how Nixon won. No one I know voted for him.
Just as the Big Three car manufacturers, with a once-monolithic hold on American consumers, seemed unaware that the public wanted a wider choice of cars (until Japan listened and responded), Pauline Kaels in-crowd of coastal elites has, if anything, become even more clueless and resistant to emerging changes in the culture and dissemination of information.
How clueless? In 2004, Jonathan Klein, the former executive vice president of CBS News, described blogging as a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing. Last May, Time-Warner CEO Richard Parsons was quoted as saying, The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation. They will lose this war if they go to war. The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at atlassociety.org ...
....well, the MSM could OFFER A BETTER PRODUCT. But that wouldn’t get their unbiased, non partisan agenda out.....
Stupid comparison. The Sioux may have won the battle, but they LOST THE WAR!
Parsons ought to remember that although the Sioux Nation defeated Custer, it eventually lost the Black Hills War.
The idea that anyones opinion is as good as the so called “Journalists” is ground breaking from a publishing aspect.
I have blogged for years and occasionally submit pieces for publication on other sites.
If anyone had told me when I started that I would have a site with tens of thousands of visitors, have a piece that was read by over a quarter million people and was a featured piece on the Rush Limbaugh show I would have told them they were nuts.
I am still amazed.
Cheers,
knewshound
Could we please stop pretending that Citizen Kane is one of the world’s Great Works of Art?
The weakness of MSM coverage versus what people get here on FreeRepublic, is that the “professional” journalist knows very little about that he’s currently assigned to report on, while here on FR we get people chiming in on discussions who have expert professional knowledge of the particular issue
The FCC -- FDR's lever that moved the world.
I don’t guess your letter to the Bee got published.
Bump for an article worth reading.
LOL
No, it didn’t.
I was shocked, shocked I tell you!
I don’t think they quite got my humor for some reason.....
Cheers,
knewshound
http://www.knewshound.blogspot.com/
Driscoll has an excellent understanding of media history, but I question his time line of the emergence of the blogosphere. He seems to undervalue the emergence of news forums like FR in the late 90s as the link between news media and blogging, long before blogger.com and their success after 9-11 which he implies came from next to nowhere.
He’s also missing the next convergence, social networking married with blogging. Some day you’ll click on a blogger’s icon and see information from his myspace page, his ebay profile, his latest FR posts, YouTube videos etc,... (and what you see will be under his control)
Good call. I too was wondering why forums were not included in the article.
“Could we please stop pretending that Citizen Kane is one of the worlds Great Works of Art?”
Hearst was the only publisher who was disputing the NYTimes and Duranty’s coverup of communist genocide.
As I understand it, the movie did achieve some technical proficiency for its time.
But I agree, I don’t find the Hearst story all that riveting. Maybe if you were part of that time, this was the ultimate rebel yell to the elites.
Is that what the fuss is?
?
“Citizen Kane” is the darling of the Hollywood left because it reduces Hearst to being a tragic fool.
This is in a long line of bashing by the left of all those who tried to uncover Communist Genocide starting in the 20’s.
“some technical proficiency for its time.”
Big deal, he used a model during that ridiculously celebrated shot from stage to theater ceiling.
(Yawn).
The impression I get is that they're less concerned about understanding what they're reporting about, than in displaying skill in spinning the story to achieve political goals ("changing the world" messianic complex)
Stupid comparison. The Sioux may have won the battle, but they LOST THE WAR!
The perfect picture of the old media's combination of arrogance and ignorance. And this is from the CEO of the company who couldn't find a way to usher the largest internet company in the world into the broadband market.
To be fair, there were at least several technical advances in cinema making.
The article makes a reference to Rathergate, but doesn't mention that this was accomplished on a forum (this forum), rather than a blog.
There were threads about this as recently as yesterday, I’ve been up for 20 hours, suggest you search on ‘Rather’.
OK
Ping to this thread, it’s a good ‘un.
Dear Mr. Parsons,
Why don’t you ask Time-Warner stockholders if they like the idea of sharing the fate of the “Sioux Nation”????
Custer’s defeat was just a temporary (though bloody) setback for the US Cavalry.
But I don’t think any analogies to cavalry and Sioux work too well when contemplating the rise of the blogosphere and the complacent old MSM......
“To be fair, there were at least several technical advances in cinema making.”
Do you recall what the others were besides the long vertical shot?
I quit years ago. What a self indulgent POS.
Anything you’d care to contribute to this thread or say to the author of the article?
I checked out your blog, and that was a great letter you sent to the Sac (”the sac”)..
Exactly. Thanks for the link to your blog.
Honestly I couldn’t list them. I saw the movie once and that was enough.
“We are the Sioux nation. They will lose this war if they go to war.”
OOPS!
Custer brought bigger weapons this time...
Interesting read.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
MSM doesn’t seem to grasp the notion of “asymmetric conflict” either. MSM has far more to lose.
I think the MSM is still the Alpha Dog. I can find no other explanation for the candidacies of McCain and Tooty Fruity Rudy. The MSM is the reason why we have the governator rather than Tom McClintock, and the reason why Fred is polling 23% while Hunter polls 1%.
We still have a lot of hills to take.
1. the MSM is a coastal-elite, hyper-urban groupthink paradigm. the MSM ignores the opinions of the Heartland except when that opinion is identical to elite Coastal thinking.
2. the MSM sees their purpose as being to advance global socialism, not to merely report news. Come up with something that convinces Americans to transfer free wealth to Africa and the MSM will publish it. Come up with something that attacks the U.S. resistance to international collectivism and the MSM will publish it.
3. ...but the above can’t win by telling the truth and holding open debates. Knowing that it must win through deceit limits the power of the MSM to those instances where it can completely control information.
That power/control has been reduced over the past 60 years by private magazines/newsletters, pirate/ham radio, BBS’s, talk radio, the Internet, Fox News, independent films/documentaries, etc.
Once an unquestioned ethical powerhouse, CBS’ 60 Minutes is now a laughingstock...all because of the lack of the MSM’s ability to fully control all information and public debate.
4. Thus, we are seeing the MSM post-epoch...they are past their peak (of power) and they can’t get it back so long as their prime goal is to advocate global socialism through deceit.
Now if say a POTUS refused to deal with the MSM and say go directly to the people via the internet, take questions from citizens instead of reporters, the White House press corps would be irrelevant.

It's the only sub-$400 sub-notebook out there. Runs linux off of a solid state hard-drive. Comes out beginning of October and I can't wait!
What is this obsession, bordering on religion, on insisting that news organizations be “objective”? In the early years of our nation every newspaper was an advocate of one political position or another. The founding fathers expected it to be so, and expressly codified their right to be partisan.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1223397/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1222920/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1221395/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1221216/posts
I’ll try to get some credit for inter-net forums (especially FR) with this author and editor.
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