This week Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stones announced that he's joined First Look Media (FLM). Taibbi is notorious for framing the term "vampire squid" to describe Goldman Sachs and his reporting is known for exposing the corruption in the financial sector.
FLM is a new media venture by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and already has Glen Greenwald (of Edward Snowden infamy) on its staff. Greenwald heads FLM's "The Intercept" publication.
It use to be that when reporters broke huge stories, such as Greenwald did with Edward Snowden, that they were bumped up the ladder to higher spots in the big leagues (ie. NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and Fox).
However, a new paradigm is clearly unfolding where there seem to be two media camps. The "free" press (where news is reported without regards for consequences) and the "narrative" press (where news is less about the details and more about the overall narrative, a narrative that requires cooperation with institutions and organizations at the center of various stories).
With the narrative press (NP) there's a close, some would argue amicable or even incestuous connection between PR folks and the press - with PR folks acting as gatekeepers to those in power. In the free press (FP) that link does not exist as reporters bypass PR folks and develop inside sources ready to dish some dirt on what is really going on.
It's why you often see extremely different narratives between the two media sources, sometimes polar opposite takes on the same story. It's not surprising when you think about it though. The NP are getting facts from PR folks who, by the nature of their job, tell a narrative from their perspective. The FP is often getting their facts from people who are bitter or upset with the establishment (facts which often carry biases of their own).
So we've got two camps unfolding, one that tells the story from the 'establishments' perspective and one that tells the story from the 'whistleblowers' perspective.
The question for PR folks is where are people getting their news?
Let's take a quick comparative look:
The Young Turks - 1.4 million subscribers
Democracy Now - 55,000 subs
The Real News - 85,000 subs
Russia today - 1.2 million subs
The Alex Jones Show - 764,000 subs
Mox news - 57,000 subs
Reddit news - 2.2 million subscribers
Mainstream Media (average viewership in primetime):
CNN - 578,000
Fox - 1.7 million
MSNBC - 640,000
NBC - 1.7 million
ABC - 1.2 million
CBS - 1.1 million
Now, the thing these numbers don't reflect is the diversity of alternative media. While I've listed a few sources above there are hundreds of sources and shows I obviously don't have time to list.
While in the mainstream press there are essentially six news outlets on television. We won't discuss newspapers here mind you, which are under attack from both alternative media and more significantly from aggregator outlets (places that don't do reporting but aggregate news from thousands of outlets). I'd argue newspapers aren't losing ground in term of importance as quickly as television outlets are.
And we should also note that subscribership to a YouTube channel does not mean every subscriber is watching each video or news report (whereas the mainstream numbers do reflect people tuning in).
With those caveats in mind, we can't say that alternative media has risen to the level of mainstream media by any means. But we can say the tables are clearly turning and it's why guys like Matt Taibbi and Glen Greenwald aren't leveraging their success to join the big boys in media news. Instead, they are going out on their own through alternative media outlets.
The future for PR folks then becomes, how to interact with these new outlets. I'll discuss this more in future posts.
FLM is a new media venture by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and already has Glen Greenwald (of Edward Snowden infamy) on its staff. Greenwald heads FLM's "The Intercept" publication.
It use to be that when reporters broke huge stories, such as Greenwald did with Edward Snowden, that they were bumped up the ladder to higher spots in the big leagues (ie. NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and Fox).
However, a new paradigm is clearly unfolding where there seem to be two media camps. The "free" press (where news is reported without regards for consequences) and the "narrative" press (where news is less about the details and more about the overall narrative, a narrative that requires cooperation with institutions and organizations at the center of various stories).
With the narrative press (NP) there's a close, some would argue amicable or even incestuous connection between PR folks and the press - with PR folks acting as gatekeepers to those in power. In the free press (FP) that link does not exist as reporters bypass PR folks and develop inside sources ready to dish some dirt on what is really going on.
It's why you often see extremely different narratives between the two media sources, sometimes polar opposite takes on the same story. It's not surprising when you think about it though. The NP are getting facts from PR folks who, by the nature of their job, tell a narrative from their perspective. The FP is often getting their facts from people who are bitter or upset with the establishment (facts which often carry biases of their own).
So we've got two camps unfolding, one that tells the story from the 'establishments' perspective and one that tells the story from the 'whistleblowers' perspective.
The question for PR folks is where are people getting their news?
Let's take a quick comparative look:
The Young Turks - 1.4 million subscribers
Democracy Now - 55,000 subs
The Real News - 85,000 subs
Russia today - 1.2 million subs
The Alex Jones Show - 764,000 subs
Mox news - 57,000 subs
Reddit news - 2.2 million subscribers
Mainstream Media (average viewership in primetime):
CNN - 578,000
Fox - 1.7 million
MSNBC - 640,000
NBC - 1.7 million
ABC - 1.2 million
CBS - 1.1 million
Now, the thing these numbers don't reflect is the diversity of alternative media. While I've listed a few sources above there are hundreds of sources and shows I obviously don't have time to list.
While in the mainstream press there are essentially six news outlets on television. We won't discuss newspapers here mind you, which are under attack from both alternative media and more significantly from aggregator outlets (places that don't do reporting but aggregate news from thousands of outlets). I'd argue newspapers aren't losing ground in term of importance as quickly as television outlets are.
And we should also note that subscribership to a YouTube channel does not mean every subscriber is watching each video or news report (whereas the mainstream numbers do reflect people tuning in).
With those caveats in mind, we can't say that alternative media has risen to the level of mainstream media by any means. But we can say the tables are clearly turning and it's why guys like Matt Taibbi and Glen Greenwald aren't leveraging their success to join the big boys in media news. Instead, they are going out on their own through alternative media outlets.
The future for PR folks then becomes, how to interact with these new outlets. I'll discuss this more in future posts.
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