The death of one-way media

The much-hyped ascendancy of the blogosphere has been interpreted in various ways. Usually, the story is of a fight between the MSM and bloggers or Old Media and New Media. I look at it as a shift from one-way media towards two-way media.

The old paradigm is one of mass media beaming information from the omniscient elites down into the heads of the peons. The media environment was closed, monopolistic, and elitist. One leading newspaper in each city and a priesthood of three television networks.

The new paradigm is one in which the knowledge of any and all social elements is represented in the media. The media environment is open, competitive, and representative. Information flows not from top to bottom, but both ways (and indefinitely more). This is the real change that is taking place. If you want to figure out which media will thrive and which will die, don't look at "who's on the net" or "who has a blog". These are technical forms which may be easily appropriated by the old media. The important thing to look at is how information flows.