I have argued for some time that the internet will free us from media mogul domination. Oddly, Rupert Murdoch has said much the same thing, a clue that I was being more than a shade optimistic. Now comes evidence that the democratising force of the net is anything but a given.
The fifth annual report on the state of the US news media, produced by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, reveals that the media oligopoly still retains its grip. More people are consuming what "old media" (ie, newsprint) outlets produce.
"The verdict on citizen media for now suggests limitations", says the report. "And research shows blogs and public affairs websites attract a smaller audience than expected and are produced by people with even more elite backgrounds than journalists."
It continues: "The biggest problem facing traditional media has less to do with where people get information than how to pay for it -- the emerging reality that advertising isn't migrating online with the consumer. The crisis in journalism, in other words, may not strictly be loss of audience. It may, more fundamentally, be the decoupling of news and advertising."
That's exactly what I said in my London Evening Standard column last week. The old business model for newspapers is no longer relevant, but that's a difficult trick to pull off. As Howard Weaver, the chief news executive of the McClatchy company, puts it: "It's like changing the oil in your car while you're driving down the freeway."
I'll return to that business about audiences for blogs tomorrow.
