Media Curmudgeon

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November 19, 2007

Karl Rove, The NY Times, and the Writers’ Strike

What do Newsweek hiring Karl Rove, the New York Times, and the current strike by the members of the Writers Guild of America have in common?

1. Let’s examine the question by beginning with Karl Rove, who was hired this past week as a columnist for Newsweek. Joseph A. Palermo wrote on the Huffington Post: “Newsweek magazine hiring Karl Rove to be a political commentator illustrates everything that is wrong with the corporate media system. Here is a guy whose scorched earth politics have left the nation reeling with ill effects and crippling divisions and he is rewarded with a prominent mouthpiece for his vitriol by one of the nation's most widely circulated newsweeklies? Newsweek might as well give a column on the subject of humanitarian living to Charles Manson.”

   Why would Newsweek open itself to such criticism? Editor Jon Meachum must have known he’d get this kind of flack, especially from the left of the aisle, which the Huffington Post represents. To deflect such criticism is probably why, according to Paul McLeary in a Columbia Journalism Review post, Meachum told “The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that his magazine's readers ‘are sophisticated enough to know that what they get from Karl has to be judged in the context of who Karl is...Readers will have to decide if he's simply an apologist.’”

   Newsweek also hired the liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas, who created the Daily Kos, to provide some balance to Rove, I suppose. But hiring Kos, although controversial, does not seem to be creating as much strum und drang as hiring Rove is.

   McLeary reveals the key to Newsweek’s decision, I believe, when he predicts that the magazine will get Kos’s and “Rove's articles linked on plenty of political blogs, and that will allow Newsweek to claim success.” The reason Newsweek hired Rove is because of the Internet and Newsweek’s realization that it must move its content to the Web. The Internet is a disruptive technology that is reeking havoc on traditional information and entertainment distribution systems.

2. The New York Times is handling the migration of its content to the Web better than any other media outlet. I’m often critical of The Times, especially its top management and the Public Editor, but it is the best newspaper in the country—truly the Journal of Record and a vitally important national treasure. Its website is sensational. It is constantly evolving, learning, improving, and expanding its features and content. Such new features as Blogging Heads—brief debates/discussions between two experts on video about current issues—are compelling, interesting, and informative. The Times is learning how to deal with reader comments, which creates a conversation with its vast, intelligent, involved audience, which is something that has never happened before—a welcome innovation. It has numerous blogs (and growing each week), such as environmental reporter Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth. The Times “gets it,” has understood the disruptive nature of the Internet, and is adopting and adopting better than any media monolith.
3. The current writers’ strike is about the Internet. The writers realized they gave away too much to the producers several years ago on DVD residuals and are determined not to do the same with the Internet. The writers want to get paid when what they write is put on the Internet. The producers claim they are not making any money on the Internet, so there is nothing to pay the writers. The writers realize this claim is specious and are looking to the future as information and entertainment content migrates to the Web.
   
   Mark Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape, writes a really smart blog, Blog.Pmarca.com, in which he wrote recently, “The writers' strike, and the studios' response to the strike, may radically accelerate a structural shift in the media industry—a shift of power from studios and conglomerates towards creators and talent.” And further on he writes, “The Internet has already been forcing a rethink of the structure of the media industry, particularly for entertainment. The strike is kicking that rethink into high gear.”

What Newsweek hiring Karl Rove, The Times, and the writers’ strike have in common is the Internet and how this disruptive technology is drastically changing the media. Old models don’t work, which many of the producers and distributors of content haven’t figured out yet. I have news for these Luddites—the creators will win. No one remembers who distributed or sold paintings by Raphael, da Vinci, Rembrandt, Manet, Van Gough, or Picasso, or who published Homer, Dante, Dumas, Tolstoy, Dickens, or Faulkner no matter how rich these businessmen were.

Posted by Charles Warner at November 19, 2007 12:43 PM

Comments

Media Curmudgeon at November 22, 2007 1:38 PM writes:

Media Curmudgeon at November 19, 2007 5:27 PM writes:

digibandit at November 19, 2007 3:27 PM writes:

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