The title is a mere paraphrase of Cathy Seipp’s NRO column headline Head-in-Sand MSM.
It’s amazing how, even in 2006, the mainstream media can sound like it’s sticking its collective fingers in its ears and yelling “Not listening! Neener neener neener!” at the mere thought of online competition.
It’s a great read as Cathy relays a couple of conversations with the mainstream media types. The first was with a TV critic from some paper in a minor American city:
I’ve never read a blog in my life. Who has time? They’re just for unemployed people who stay at home all day. No one’s ever made any money from blogging. No! I’m not worried about my job at all. My kids don’t read blogs either, and they’re in their 20s.
To which Cathy adds:
Then he looked at the lifeless form of the newspaper in front of him on the table and said, “I do believe in fairies. I do, I do, I do believe in fairies.”
Just kidding about that last part, but really, he might as well have.
I am so going to use that phrase! The second conversation was with Alan Wurtzel, NBC’s president of research and media development, whom Cathy asked what he thought of this kind of old-media attitude:
“For you guys, it’s not as though they don’t want what you do, but they’re going to consume it in a different way. The news business isn’t trending down; it’s the paper business that’s trending down.”
“Never fight with the consumer,” Wurtzel told me, about these MSM types who seem so sure of kind of news the public ought to want, “you’ll always lose.” He added: “Boy, there are two businesses I wouldn’t put money into right now — newspapers and TV stations. There’s just too many other ways to get news.”
The rest of Cathy’s post reminds me of why public events/gatherings in the US creep me out too.
