Will the Real News Station Please Stand Up?

Media today can either go down a democratic media path or a corporate media path. 

A democratic media is a media where everyone can contribute through personal blogs, personal Twitter accounts, and more.  A corporate media is a form of media that uses methods like oligopoly, the process where a few wealthy owners control the industry by buying out smaller companies.  This budgets the economic costs of journalism and reporting news stories.

So where will the media go? Will corporate medias die out and democratic medias replace them? Or are corporate medias too important to society? There is no clear-cut answer to this question but I have formed an opinion based on my own observations; people use corporate media to acquire the news, and they use democratic media to understand the news.   

Internet exceeds television as news source for younger generation

Where people actually get their news is a multifaceted question.  We see the older generation reading newspapers and watching television news channels.  However, the younger generation mostly reads all of their information over the Internet.  A survey conducted in 2010 proved for the first time that more people under the age of thirty learned their news over the Internet rather than from the television, a monumental first where the Internet exceeded the television as a means of acquiring the news. 

There is a difference between the technological ways that the younger and older generations acquire information. 

However, this does not attest to whether or not corporate media will die out.  A person browsing the Internet can choose to read a personal blog and a Twitter account, or they can choose to read a legitimate news station’s online webpage.  So where do people acquire their news online?  This question stumped me and I decided, out of mere curiosity, to question and survey a few of my teenage friends.  When I asked them where they learn the headline news, the responses I received were surprisingly similar; all of my friends responded with a link to a popular corporate news website like, ‘nytimes.com’, ‘people.com’, and ‘newsday.com’.  Embarrassing as it is, my own immediate answer to this question was, ‘from the Facebook statuses of my peers’.  While the small survey I conducted was not directed in a proper academic way that could serve as legitimate data and proof, it did make one concept apparent to me: people will always need an authentic website to provide as a news source.  CNN or The New York Times are both popular and trustworthy names, as opposed to a personal blog or a Twitter account.  Therefore, corporate medias will never fully be dismissed even with the arrival of new technology.

People turn to corporate news stations as a means of acquiring news and personal blogs and twitter accounts as means of understanding the news. 

Individuals trust and value the opinions of their peers.  For example, a celebrity scandal hits the media.  People Magazine reports that the action done by the celebrity is shocking and wrong.  However, if a person reads this article and then reads contradictory personal blogs and ‘tweets’ about the action, who will they agree with more: People Magazine or their friends’ blogs?  A blog feels more intimate and relatable in a way that a corporate news station cannot, and this is appealing to many people. 

As discussed in chapter one, technological advances are affecting the media and the media is changing through processes like convergence. 

I have tried through the course of this blog to rationalize the fact that new technology does not necessarily cancel out corporate media stations. Corporate news is economically efficient, and thus does not need to be overturned by democratic news. At the end of the day, it is a corporate media station that is called upon to conduct official interviews and report official news.  Will any person with a blog interview the President of the United States someday?  I certainly do not think so.  That is, and will continue to be, a job for a professional, a professional employed by a corporate media.