MSM, Can’t You Recognize Your Irrelevance?

One Vignette says it all —

“You wouldn’t believe how badly they treated her,” an insider friend told me of Sarah Palin not too long ago. I assumed this person meant the Republican establishment. One can only imagine what they’ve been up to.

So Thursday night the former Alaska governor posted the following on her Facebook page ^[1]:

The votes of every member of Congress affect every American, so it’s important for all of us to pay attention to this important Congressional campaign in upstate New York. I am very pleased to announce my support for Doug Hoffman in his fight to be the next Representative from New York’s 23rd Congressional district. It’s my honor to endorse Doug and to do what I can to help him win, including having my political action committee, SarahPAC, donate to his campaign the maximum contribution allowed by law.

Our nation is at a crossroads, and this is once again a “time for choosing.”

Palin has been sending a couple messages recently. First, she has, since stepping down as governor, started to communicate with the people not through the press but around the press. In other words, she’s speaking directly to the people through social media. She has had a couple well-timed and well-placed op-eds that have helped define policy arguments. However, most of the time she’s talked to the people via social media. (It should be noted that she’s been silent on Twiiter for some time — something I hope she’ll change soon.) This has had the benefit of letting the press know that she does not need them. Rather than go the Obama route and deny what is perceived as the one “enemy” to her aims, Sarah denies nearly everyone. And why not? The press trashed her with risible lies. Why give a dying breed ratings when she can reach the people herself?

Set aside whether you love of hate Palin. She does not seem to affect people any other way. The key is the delivery vehicle. Total news cycle bypass. It has also permitted the former governor to tap into a huge funding base. Long term –

• If you have the presence, a politican does not have to toe the news cycle. Fact they won’t even have to have their positions filtered. They just blast it out in a Twitter link to the relevant page on a data source on the Internet.
• It forces the news organizations to play catch up. Not once in a while but every time something is sent out. The politician’s base is receiving those Twitter and RSS feeds in real time the same time that a E.J. Dione or Krauthammer are. The reader can now make their own minds up on the position. The Press gatekeeper function is gone.

Whither then do things go? Well we are already seeing it. The news weeklies are almost gone. The cycle is too long to be relevant. We are also seeing the effect in the major dailies as well. Any winners? I can think of one class — think tanks. Organizations like Cato and Brookings. The voter might have received the latest missive from the politician. But…. the internet has fostered the idea of fact checking in much of the public. However most do not have the time to do the data mining to validate the concepts. Hence the think tanks have an opportunity if the democratize^ their content relevant to current events.

Its the classic story of supply chain collapse. Most of America is already used to the idea of not reading a pulp paper. So do us all a favor there MSM — die.

Linky.

^ As is typical, much of the content provided by think tanks are couched in the language of the Washington Beltway. To make such content palpable to rank and file Americans a serious scrubbing effort needs to occur.

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