Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: Democratization of News Media
It's November 2009 and we're nearing the end of a decade. It's been a tumultuous time of change for many industries, much of it driven by the Internet. The newspaper industry has been particularly affected by the Web. Over the past 10 years, news media has undergone a seachange akin to the invention of the printing press in 1440.
Just as Johannes Gutenberg's printing press brought books to the mainstream public in the 15th century, Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web brought commercial publishing to the people.
The Web has always been a medium where people could just as easily write as read (yes, the read/write Web), however it didn't reach its potential until blogging came along earlier this decade.
Blogging
Blogging not only allowed anybody to publish easily to the Web, it ended up shaking up the print media world.
Blogging began in the 90s as a form of online diary - Rebecca Blood wrote a good pre-history in 2000. One of the early popular blogging services was Blogger.com, launched by Evan Williams (who subsequently became a co-founder of Twitter) and Meg Hourihan in August 1999. The service was acquired by Google in February 2003, a couple of months before ReadWriteWeb began. At that point, 2003, blogging was still seen as an informal diary-type of publishing.
Around 2004-05, blogging started to become accepted as a legitimate news source. This was around the time that ReadWriteWeb began to publish tech news, as well as analysis.
By the end of the decade, many blogs were directly challenging newspapers - proving that a solid news brand, such as Huffington Post, can be created from almost nothing in a few years.
RSS
Blogging software was one part of the democratization of media. RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") was another. There were and still are different versions of RSS, created by Dave Winer and others. But whatever the flavor, syndication has had a major impact on media.
Basically RSS allowed people to subscribe to updates from blogs and other publications. Using RSS Aggregators, people could read news from a selection of niche and general news publications.
Blogs were the first to utilize RSS, but mainstream media followed during the 2005-06 period. Today it is very rare for a major news website - whether it be the New York Times or a leading blog - not to use RSS.
Twitter & The Real-Time Web
The next major development in news media occurred towards the end of this decade. It was of course Twitter and the Real-Time Web.
To be fair, this has challenged not only traditional media - but blogs as well. Now anyone, whether they're a writer or not, can publish 140 characters to the Web. And it might end up as breaking news, as the Hudsen River plane crash proved earlier this year.
Media in the Next Decade
There is much talk of the mainstream media "dying" and blogs usurping traditional media companies like the New York Times. While it's true that blogs sometimes report breaking news stories or analyze them better than newspaper websites, I'm a big believer in the power of brand. Washington Post, Wall St Journal, New York Times - these are all powerful brands and they reach a much wider audience than the vast majority of blogs.
The challenge of course for mainstream media is to (drastically) reduce their costs, because few people want to pay for content these days - news or otherwise.
However, in my view the traditional news media industry is in much less danger of extinction than the music industry. Musicians can bypass record labels completely nowadays, but there will always be a need for news to be questioned, put in context and analyzed. The best media publications of the next 10 years will do that and be successful, the ones that don't will fade away.
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Innovation for both traditional and the new democratized media in the next decade is less about driving traffic to a destination site and more about how the original source benefits (i.e., makes money) from their content as it's distributed and re-aggregated across the web.
Brillant. Simple, complete, smart and short. I agree with your concepts and selection of highlights.
Interesting post. But I beg to differ on your assertion that "By the end of the decade, many blogs were directly challenging newspapers - proving that a solid news brand, such as Huffington Post, can be created from almost nothing in a few years."
Is the Huffington Post really a solid news brand? As far as I am aware, they produce very little original content, relying instead on the aggregation of news from established players.
One man's aggregation is another man's theft ..
Bryce, I agree that's an issue. Nevertheless, in terms of their popularity, traffic and brand name - I think they're right up there with some newspapers as a news source.
For what it's worth, I also expect that the future will still have a place for some news organizations, while I don't see much point to record companies. I buy a lot of music, and I've watched the music industry (as an outsider) since the late 1970's.
The thing about record companies is that they don't really know what the hell they're doing, and haven't known for at least 20 years. All they did was put up a "toll-gate" between the people who wanted to perform music, and people who wanted to listen to music. And then they appointed themselves the gate-keepers, and charged everyone a toll for letting music go from one side to the other side. They really don't know what makes a "hit". They don't know how to discover *new* music, they just know how to repeat whatever was a hit last year. In general, they don't really pay *most* of their artists enough to make a living (because the record company is skimming off too much of the money for themselves, not the artist). And now record-companies want "360-deals" from whatever artists they sign. What a rip off.
In the late 1990's, the record companies fired a bunch of old-timer artists who weren't making enough money for the companies. Some of those artists then went on to make *more* money without a record company, then they had made when the record company was "helping" their career. The artists would have smaller audiences (usually), but collected more money from each fan in that audience. And the artist was left to do whatever music they wanted to do, and not what some record executive thought was "hot with the kids these days".
The problem for news organizations is that the public wants everything for free. The problem for the record industry is that the public doesn't want a gate-keeper in the first place. I want to hear the music I want to hear, and not the playlist that some top-40 station is locked into.
Reflect on this:
The printing industry has been around nearly 600 years, and became at it's most 'efficient' (speed to market, spread of coverage, ability to utilise technology to gather and source news), as recently as the last decade.
The Internet 'industry' literally 'happened', in a few short years!
With regard to news media there were many changes that took place from 2000 to 2009. There is major success in the role of news media and there are developments going on continuously.
They really don't know what makes a "hit". They don't know how to discover *new* music, they just know how to repeat whatever was a hit last year. In general, they don't really pay *most* of their artists enough to make a living
thanks so much for a good topic