Saturday, July 13, 2024

Still An Interesting Place For A Discussion

I’m starting in media res, but only because it’s a long thread and you can find the set up for yourself. This bit is in line with my own recent thinking. Jarvis lays out (briefly; it is still Twitter) a case that mass media depended on a “mass” the way GE depended on “consumers” or Disney an audience and later, masses coming to its park. Not an audience (as in the days of papers for every ethnic and political group), but an undifferentiated mass simply buying what the papers sold. The internet, he argues, has wrecked all that, and a good thing, too.

Given the recent antics of the NYT and The New Yorker (what is it about NYC and revanchism? It seems to breed it, with Trump as its exemplar.), it’s hard to much disagree with him. JMM, unsurprisingly, tilts away from Jarvis’ conclusions:
Well, of course the NYT can go hog wild against Biden (and belatedly try to pretend to be fair and balanced by opining Trump isn’t really much good either. A stance which seems to be telling the nation to scrap them both and force the parties to give us better choices three months before Election Day. A solution that might work in an Aaron Sorkin or Robert Redford movie, but isn’t much good in real life.). It’s still a free country (so far). The question that raises, though, especially in response to so trivial a provocation, is: WTF?🤬 Who, as Jarvis implies, died and made the NYT editorial board the Privy Council and George Clooney the Prince Regent? What, in other words, authority are they laying claim to? Power over the mass based on circulation and celebrity?

Aye, there’s the question.

Yes, there is a clear, fundamental threat to the American Republic in Donald Trump and the Heritage Foundation that wants to guide him. But the New York media giants want their power back. And they’ve never seemed so jealous of it since Bill Clinton came to D.C. from Arkansas.  Being definitely NOK to the NYT, the Grey Lady immediately fell for the poltroons in the Ozarks selling night crawlers to city slickers as Arkansas lobster. (Gene Lyons limned all of this a decade before the NYT fell for the lie of WMD in Iraq. It wasn’t the internet alone that destroyed the Grey Lady. It was her own arrogance and gullibility. One could argue this was presaged by the hiring, and dismissing, of Molly Ivins. A truly great journalist the august NYT never understood, because she was from the wrong side of the Hudson. Like Bill Clinton. What is it about NYC?) History is rhyming like a bad greeting card, and the poetaster general is located in New York City.

I think Josh is too narrow in his concerns, and Jarvis is much closer to the truth of it. The Times and the New Yorker are not being foolish, they are deliberately acting foolishly. They seem to realize they’ve lost the attention of the audience, and that is something up with which they will not put! If a fellow NYC icon got attention for being contrary and belligerent, they will, too! TeeVee, after all, reports it dutifully as Very Important. And then Joe Biden mocks it and jeers it and kicks it to the curb, and the crowd in Detroit cries out for more! Proving that perhaps, just perhaps, the mass is not that interested in what the mass media has to say.

Wait’ll they figure out most people don’t want to talk to pollsters, either. 
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