The term “New Media” is now official — Michael Barone
We thought we produced a pretty comprehensive outline of the rise of the New Media a couple of months ago. But it may be today that is the official christening of the New Media, since the author of The Almanac of American Politics has spoken. Is his Town Hall column today, Michael Barone hits all the high points — Rathergate, Deep QaQaa, the attempt to cover-up the SwifBoatVets — and notes that the Old Media’s monopoly power has disappeared from its pinnacle a quarter century ago:
I had a theory in the 1980s that you could cover the presidential campaign from five rooms — the two rooms in which the candidates’ morning meetings were held and the three rooms, all on the West Side of Manhattan, in which the network producers and anchors decided what would run on the 6:30 newscasts. The interaction between the people in those five rooms pretty much determined what the voters would learn about the candidates and the campaigns.
Barone does not get into the numbers of the Old Media’s decline from this height in 1980, and in truth, the numbers are hard to make comparable because not all events cover the same time period. But consider these, which we have discussed in many places on this site:
– the nightly news broadcasts of CBS, ABC and NBC have declined from 60 million viewers in 1980 to about 27 million today, a decline of 55%
– using Rush Limbaugh’s audience as a benchmark, talk radio has gone from near zero in 1980 to 60-80 million today
– Fox News and Fox TV drew 13 million viewers to election coverage on 11/2 versus less than 10 million at CBS
– the New York Times has had a staggering 22% decline in circulation in its home market over the last ten years, putting it solidly in third place behind the Daily News and Post (both of which endorsed Bush BTW)
The power of the Old Media to set a news agenda has been greatly diminished. It will be interesting to see how the New Media sort out the business of setting their own agenda for the news.