By Kristen Obst, PhD
Program Director, Public Administration at American Public University
How we produce and consume news is changing, but not with the civic implications that many had predicted when the internet was young and content was free. Predictions made in the earliest days of the internet of massive change in how news is produced and consumed have come true in some respects, but have fallen short by some of the most meaningful measures.
Today we have a producer-consumer model where the consumer can leave comments after the article, other readers can chastise them, and the writer can respond. It is an odd model that reminds me of the social interactions in my son’s kindergarten; I don’t think we are civically better for it. There is some user-generated news and iReport weather and traffic reports do help me avoid accidents or chase storms, but I don’t know that they have allowed us to expand beyond the news as consumption concept.
What has expanded, or constricted, depending on how you look at it, are technology options. The conundrum is overlap: it is often the same producers that are overlapping in various media, meaning one company may own and broadcast using various technologies. The American Press Institute says that Americans turn to five separate news sources each week with choices are driven by content and about 75% of us do it daily. Gallup finds that television news dominates, but those consumers also use other media and devices.
Newspaper circulation hasn’t changed precipitously, but it has moved largely from print to online and not in an elegant way. Younger readers are lithe and flexible, taking our grandfather’s newspaper and putting it online was like asking my kids to iron their sheets. These readers are bored with content that is reacting to events; they want to create content.
Along with the disappearance of print news and the movement to digital media, the other major trend in news distribution is the consolidation of outlets. The Wall Street Journal and Pew Research Center have been tracking cable consolidation for at least 20 years, resulting in what looks like an NCAA playoff chart. Within these corporate consolidations, we have witnessed their news programs compete with each other and mimic each other until their formats are almost identical.
Should the $45 billion Comcast-Time Warner merger be approved, that would leave only three main providers. History and ECON101 show us what decreased competition lead to: increased prices. Some investors predict that cable is dying, but it won’t be replaced by satellite which is facing its own bundling shakeup with mergers and acquisitions as AT&T moves to purchase DirecTV for $48 billion. Nor will it be replaced by Netflix, Google, or Roku. Can you imagine if we turned to Netflix for our news?
When we think of the news it isn’t really news, it is more commentary than anything. If you watch your local news, it is probably a retelling of the day’s events. But if you are watch a syndicated news show on a national station and it is available 24 hours a day, you are watching an interpretation of the events. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reported that opinion is dominating television news, with MSNBC devoting as much as 85% of its airtime to commentary instead of factual reporting. CNN devoted 46% and FOX News 55% over the same three days in 2012. All three major outlets have converged in the last few years and their formats are strikingly similar, further shrinking an already constricting market.
The takeaway is that our news has changed: the content, distribution, and consumption, and we are not necessarily better informed as a result of this transformation. In 2013, Rasmussen Reports found that most Americans considered themselves to be informed, but only 12% thought their fellow “Americans are informed voters.” The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press find that despite the digital revolution, Americans don’t know much more than we did before we had access to searchable 24 hour content.
While we have multiple technologies to go to for news, they are owned by strikingly few companies who go to the same wholesalers for content. The commentary and opinion segments are what differentiate the national television giants, and locality is what differentiates the regional contributors. Thus, the old adage, when a dog bites a man, it isn’t news, but when the man bites the dog, it still might not be news, needs an update: if it is caught on a personal cell phone and the video goes viral and is replayed on the news, THEN it is news.
About the Author
Dr. Kristen Obst is an Associate Professor and the Program Director for the Public Administration and Security Management programs at American Public University. She received her BA in Sociology from Swarthmore College, and her MA and Ph.D. in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware. Her dissertation was on how cities and urban events are represented in editorial cartoons, one of our nation’s proudest legacies of political commentary. She is married to a member of the US Army and lives near Fort Bragg, NC.
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