I’ve got to admit, I was a little surprised that Dave’s post about the media and content distribution was so close to accurate. Tell the four horsemen to hold on, though, because he definitely there was definitely the obligatory Winer embellishments.
First a little history. The print publishing industry, and the print-inspired electronic publishing industry, made it possible for information to be transmitted back when the transmission equipment was expensive, but it was always a very lossy transmission, subject to manipulation by the person doing the reporting, and the person doing the editing, the owner of the publication, etc. In the process, a little truth leaked out, but not much; and nothing that that the publishers didn’t want out there (and there was no visibility at all into the motivations of the publishers).
While his points are mostly salient, I don’t think he gives our fathers’ media enough credit for getting the truth out. We have to remember that most journalists of the last century felt a moral obligation to report the truth… contrasted with this century’s journalists who feel a moral obligation to spread their message.
And let’s not get ahead of ourselves… much of this is still true to a certain extent today.
If you had an idea you wanted people to hear you either had to convince a reporter to write about it or pay the publisher to let your idea hitch a ride on his transmission, and even then they might refuse to carry it. What a horrible system!
Having a blog today is about as productive as standing in the middle of Times Square and and shouting at the top of your lungs. It’s going to take a long time to get your message anywhere. Having a blog doesn’t give you access to millions of eyes, it gives millions of eyes access to you. A key difference.
Today you don’t have to convince a publisher, but you do have to convince every single one of your readers to even know you exist. You can’t just slap your headline on a front page and get readers the way you can with a newspaper.
Sure, many many more people have a shot to get their message out to the masses, but the odds are still incredibly low. Luckily that is offset somewhat by a bit of a meritocracy among bloggers… the good ones will, with some patience and persistence, rise to the top.
So, embellishments aside, Dave definitely has a good point this time around.