>> On May 14, I wrote:

>>It makes me wonder: Will the old-line media companies that transition
>>to the Web abet these consolidations, which potentially would return
>>the "printing press franchise" to them and decrease access to the rest
>>of us? Or will they fight against such trends and thereby help ensure
>>freedom of the press for the aforesaidmentioned little guy?

>On May 15, John N. Walston wrote:

>.We may need to be concerned about corporate dominance on the 'Net, but
>I don't believe it will be the Knight-Ridders, Gannetts or Times
>Mirrors.....Yes, watch out for the AT&Ts and the Baby Bells....watch
>out for TCI...and, of course, our NEWEST Big Brother Microsoft.

John,

I agree that the big news chains are not going to control much bandwidth
the Net. They're starting from way too far behind both in terms of
corporate mindset and experience.

I'm not convinced that the big guys will control bandwidth, at least in
the foreseeable future. But just for the sake of discussion, let's say
that Baby Bells, TCI, AT&T, Microsoft, et al control a significant
amount of bandwidth and are chintzy about parceling it out. They thereby
become the new "publishers."  What does this mean for the quality of
news (and the quality of life of journalists?)

Judging from Microsoft's efforts to date, the big software/comm
companies aren't going to be any great shakes at news creation --
delivery's the name of their game and they're smart enough to know that.
That being the case, I see two things emerging.

The first and most obvious is that the Knight Ridders and Times Mirrors
will become (are already becoming) the content providers for the TCIs
and Microsofts. You can see that even with a cloudy crystal ball. This
will be, I believe, commodity news -- nothing deep or investigative,
just basic coverage of basic events.

But people will still want depth and details. Many individuals like
depth and businesses requires it to make sound business decisions. So
the second thing I see emerging is specialty journalism. And, as we've
discussed here before, these new "journalists" may be economists, Army
generals or merely keen observers in foreign lands with an Internet
connection -- but not necessarily J-school grads.

Perhaps it's beating a dead horse to death, but this scenario (and my
assumptions about it) again describes a world in which journalism is
significantly different than it is now, both in terms of those who
gather the news and those who "publish" it.

- -- 
David Haskin
dhaskin@execpc.com
Madison, WI

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End of online-news-digest V1 #651
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From owner-online-news-digest@marketplace.com Thu May 16 12:30:58 1996
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