Online Media Cultist

In a trend that we’re likely to see throughout 2008 and over the next few years, two US newspapers – the Cincinnati Post and Kentucky Post – have shut down their print editions. The Kentucky Post will live on as an online-only publication.

I love HBO’s The Wire. I mean love. It’s so gritty, so real, has such great characters, great writing, great stories, and is occasionally deeply and richly and oddly funny in that way that The Sopranos defined.

And I dig exec producer David Simon – from everything I’ve seen he’s super smart, interesting, and obviously has been behind one powerhouse of a show about his hometown of Baltimore, now going into its fifth and final season.

There’s a great interview with him here on Ain’t It Cool News. But I do have to take issue with him when he says:

And newspaper managers - who have so much contempt for their own product that they give it away for free, misreading the internet as advertising for the product, when it was the product itself - they tell us they are going to do more with less. You do less with less, that’s why they call it less.

I do get where he’s coming from. He’s an old newspaper guy, and the upcoming season of The Wire takes a look at how the media is partly complicit in the plight of the inner city, how stories are driven by bottom lines and sensational headlines instead of by a dedication to getting to the real stories and real problems, which ironically cost more money and tend to sell less well with the populace.

But blaming advertising-supported online content is pointing a finger in the wrong direction, I’m afraid. Newspapers were consolidating under monopolistic corporations well before people starting heading online in droves for news and information. Further, while the Internet is ripping to shreds old models for how content providers and traditional media companies make money, there’s every chance, I would argue, that the online world can and in some ways already does provide a platform where top-notch reporting can find an audience and make money at the same time.

Rosie O’Donnell is leaving The View. Apparently she couldn’t come to a contractual agreement with ABC and therefore will leave the show in mid-June.

Why do I know this? Because of the screaming headlines all across the major mainstream media Interwebs.

ABC News, on its bright red Breaking News banner: Rosie O’Donnell Will Leave “The View” In Mid-June After Failing To Reach New Contract Agreement

Fox News, top story, above-the-fold: ABC Ends Rosie ‘View’

CNN, number one Top Story: Rosie O’Donnell leaving ‘The View’

MSNBC and CBS News also run the story above-the-fold.

I’ll ask my question again, but in a slightly different way: why do I know about this breaking development in the Rosie O’Donnell saga? I take it that the angle is that Rosie is apparently a “raunchy” and “controversial” figure, so therefore updating the public on developments in her career are, for these news organizations, paramount in importance.

But it’s not very important, is it? The View is a daytime talk show where four female hosts gab about the news of the day and occasionally interview someone. It’s light infotainment.

That all of the online outlets for the big television news networks chose to run this story loud and proud – particularly as breaking news on ABC – is telling. Sadly, it’s infotainment coverage of an infotainment television program presented as the-most-important-thing-you-should-take-note-of-thissecond.

No wonder why so many people now turn to the blogosphere and online independent news sources first for news these days.