The latest print version of National Review includes James DeLong of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s assessment of the demise of traditional mainstream news media outlets.
Among his most interesting observations are those focusing on the impact of the market power these outlets once consolidated in newsgathering and dissemination.
But that market power was also the industry’s undoing. It is a truth universally acknowledged that any organization that escapes the discipline of the market ? university, foundation, government agency, industrial enterprise ? gets captured, inch by inch, by its staffers, and its market power is then turned to their benefit, which may take the form of money, ease, ideological satisfaction, or all three.
So it was with McNews. Pay went up, and parroting some alpha source such as the New York Times greatly reduced the demands and stress of the job. For many, journalism was not just a job but a chance to make a difference ? meaning, in most cases, a chance to promote the vague ideology of state power exercised in the interests of the victim du jour. For an explanation of why this mindset came to dominate the once-honorable blue-collar trade of newspapering, you might ask a cultural anthropologist ? but the same ideology dominates universities, foundations, and government, so the answer would probably be denial.
For John Hood’s take on the future of news media, click here.
