What Is Revolutionary Media? 3 Key Ideas
Old media is dying. It’s also oppressing people on the way out by
throwing a temper tantrum as it dies, and it’s hurting everybody —
especially those of us who want to be journalists in a sustainable
career, and for anyone who wants to reach people.
But new media kind of looks like a sweat shop! On July 1, Digiday published a study on the volume of publishing in modern online media. According
to their figures, Huffington Post has 532 full time staff churning out
1,200 articles per day, with an additional 400 unpaid blog posts
generated daily. Buzzfeed, the biggest “success story” of modern,
list-based journalism meanwhile has 100 paid staff members producing
over 350 pieces of content daily.
They both have very different models for how they work, but it’s just
a standard of being a journalist today that you’re expected to work for
free. And then eventually, if you’re lucky, you might also rise above
some other people who are also working just as hard as you, and actually
get paid for your work. Some paid writers are churning out 10 or 15
articles a day to maintain those levels of output. This isn’t
sustainable.
And old agendas are getting imported into new media. I’ve been trying
to give up my addiction to Stitcher, a podcasting app, because they’ve
been playing advertising for the new Goldman Sachs podcast. I don’t want
that on my phone! But it’s a perfect example of how old agendas are
coming into our new formats. Plus, we’re still importing this idea of
neutrality which is bullshit.
So here’s three major points to focus on when we imagine revolutionary media.
