Slate announced today that Michael Crichton is finally being vindicated for an article he wrote in 1993 for Wired magazine about the coming extinction of mass media within 10 years. I heartily agree … to a point.
Crichton, while being an often marginal fiction writer, is a hell of a futurist sometimes. His prediction that mass media would collapse by 2003, failed, as futurist predictions often do, to take into account how slowly the public changes its habits. The networks and newspaper are still around, because most people over the age of 30 aren’t particularly comfortable with computer technology, and computer technology has been slow become accessible to the non-nerd majority in the way that, say, cell phones or the Nintendo Wii have.
While I do agree with Crichton that traditional media are on a sharply angled slope to oblivion, I part ways with him when he starts ranting about the quality of news and the yawning need for factual reporting as the reason why it’s all going to shit. Spoken like a man who has never set foot in a newsroom.
One of the things any aspiring editor of a general news publication quickly learns is that the American public is a generally incurious, stupid bunch who respond to sensationalism, generalism and simplicity above all else. Oh, and this idiot class loves to call the media stupid, even as they keep staring intently at the intellectual mirror created for them. The media’s job, contrary to idealistic belief, is not to be the light of reason and truth in this dark, dumb world. It’s job is to broadcast material of the broadest possible appeal to sell gobs of advertising. None of the subscription-based database services Crichton aludes to would be able to function as a general news source and make a profit without resorting to advertising, and the public isn’t willing to pay such a high subscription fee to view the minutia they currently stockpile. And, while large advertisers may endure tailoring their messages to every little niche audience, the small ones who make up the backbone of media advertising are still going to want the biggest general audience for their buck.
The collapse of the mainstream media will not come from competition from more quality online sources; it will come from competition from the same old shit on a new medium. This is not a cultural shift, as Crichton imagined; this is the democratization of that culture by a new medium.
