Politico: The Media Bubble Is Real, And Worse Than You Think

[zoony]

This isn’t just a shift in medium. It’s also a shift in sociopolitics, and a radical one. Where newspaper jobs are spread nationwide, internet jobs are not: Today, 73 percent of all internet publishing jobs are concentrated in either the Boston-New York-Washington-Richmond corridor or the West Coast crescent that runs from Seattle to San Diego and on to Phoenix. The Chicagoland area, a traditional media center, captures 5 percent of the jobs, with a paltry 22 percent going to the rest of the country. And almost all the real growth of internet publishing is happening outside the heartland, in just a few urban counties, all places that voted for Clinton. So when your conservative friends use “media” as a synonym for “coastal” and “liberal,” they’re not far off the mark.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bubble-real-journalism-jobs-east-coast-215048

 

[zoony]

And in related news

 

One number in the Post-ABC poll really stood out to me as something that should worry Democrats pondering the party's future: Asked whether the Democratic Party is in touch with the concerns of the average person, just 28% of respondents said it is -- as opposed to 67% who said Democrats are out of touch. Those numbers are worse than the "in touch/out of touch" numbers for either the Republican Party or Trump in that same poll.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/24/politics/democratic-party-poll/index.html

[codeorama]

Neither party is in touch with the average person. That's why they both suck.

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

If the GOP and Trump are more in touch with the average person then I guess we are all just ****ed.

[TradeTheBeal!]

Fox News operates out of NYC.

 

Breitbart headquarters are in Los Angeles.

[DogofWar1]

37 minutes ago, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

If the GOP and Trump are more in touch with the average person then I guess we are all just ****ed.

I think "in touch" probably is thought of in emotion terms, that is, does this person/party connect with me emotionally.

 

Democrats are notoriously bad at that, at least among white people.  Republicans seem to have that instinct about connecting with people on an emotional level.

 

Now, strip out the emotion, and make it purely about competing policy?  Dems do much better.  You could probably connect it back to being "in touch" if you tried hard enough.  (Poll ACA vs. AHCA.  Then poll about politicians who support each as to how in touch they are)

 

But "in touch" is a bad benchmark most of the time.  A politician proposing subsidized relocation and retraining/college in coal country is always going to be less "in touch" than a guy going "rah rah America rah rah coal."

[Hersh]

30 minutes ago, TryTheBeal! said:

Fox News operates out of NYC.

 

Breitbart headquarters are in Los Angeles.

Good old Rush is in Palm Beach and Infowars, I believe, is in Austin, TX. Drudge is Miami or somewhere like that?

 

If they were real conservatives that were in touch with "real" Americans they would live elsewhere. 

[mcsluggo]

its even more true for the ivory tower loons.   i've heard a dastardly rumor (but don;t have any hard data to back it up)  that most professors and college students live within a 20 mile radius of some college campus or another, and we all know that ALL of those are festering mounds of lilly livered liberalism.

 

its all so inbred 

[Hersh]

8 minutes ago, mcsluggo said:

its even more true for the ivory tower loons.   i've heard a dastardly rumor that most professors and college students live within a 20 mile radius of some college campus or another, and we all know that ALL of those are festering mounds of lilly livered liberalism.

 

its all so inbred 

It shows Trumps incredible magic powers that a guy isolated in golden towers surrounded by liberal land and who only watches these media companies is the savior of conservatives. 

[Burgold]

The bigger real concern to me is and has been for a while the shrinking of the newsrooms and the demise of newspapers. We have seen the results of this in a pretty profound way even if we don't recognize it. A shorthanded newsroom means that you can not afford boots on the ground. That means less investigation, fewer original stories, and a short reach. It also tends to mean a greater reliance on analysis and news wires.

 

On cable news you see this in a big way. Every story is a copy cat and they usually don't cover more than 2 or three stories a day. What's worse is that they tend to cover every story with a round table interview with analysts. That means that you are getting opinion not news. You are getting spin not facts. They are not getting the scientist with the breakthrough talking about his process and results. They are getting a science expert who talks about it globally. They are not looking deeply into neighborhoods to find corruption and ferret it out. Instead, they echo whatever someone put out on AP. If one guy gets it wrong the whole chain can get corrupted.

 

I'm painting a slightly darker picture than is reality, but TV and Talk Radio rely on pundits because they are cheap. It costs very little to bring experts into a studio and ask them to blather. More, some are so lazy that they keep repeating the same on call analyst as if they are experts on every subjects who've done in depth research. You can tell by the superficiality of the answers that that isn't the case. These aren't objective political scientists, sociologists, etc. They are shills for a POV. That means far too often you know exactly what is going to be said before the interview even begins.

 

Ultimately, you get what you pay for. When people decided not to pay for their news (newspapers) and started relying on blogs, twitter, and tv... the level of discourse and the degree of information dropped considerably. This, of course, makes politicians pretty happy. An ignorant population is that much easier to control.

[TradeTheBeal!]

The good old days...

 

[Bozo the kKklown]

28 minutes ago, DogofWar1 said:

I think "in touch" probably is thought of in emotion terms, that is, does this person/party connect with me emotionally.

 

Democrats are notoriously bad at that, at least among white people.  Republicans seem to have that instinct about connecting with people on an emotional level.

 

Now, strip out the emotion, and make it purely about competing policy?  Dems do much better.  You could probably connect it back to being "in touch" if you tried hard enough.  (Poll ACA vs. AHCA.  Then poll about politicians who support each as to how in touch they are)

 

But "in touch" is a bad benchmark most of the time.  A politician proposing subsidized relocation and retraining/college in coal country is always going to be less "in touch" than a guy going "rah rah America rah rah coal."

GOP knows how to make white people feel good about being white and their privilege more than the Democrats do. 

 

Both parties are washed, as far as im concerned.

7 minutes ago, Burgold said:

The bigger real concern to me is and has been for a while the shrinking of the newsrooms and the demise of newspapers. We have seen the results of this in a pretty profound way even if we don't recognize it. A shorthanded newsroom means that you can not afford boots on the ground. That means less investigation, fewer original stories, and a short reach. It also tends to mean a greater reliance on analysis and news wires.

 

On cable news you see this in a big way. Every story is a copy cat and they usually don't cover more than 2 or three stories a day. What's worse is that they tend to cover every story with a round table interview with analysts. That means that you are getting opinion not news. You are getting spin not facts. They are not getting the scientist with the breakthrough talking about his process and results. They are getting a science expert who talks about it globally. They are not looking deeply into neighborhoods to find corruption and ferret it out. Instead, they echo whatever someone put out on AP. If one guy gets it wrong the whole chain can get corrupted.

 

I'm painting a slightly darker picture than is reality, but TV and Talk Radio rely on pundits because they are cheap. It costs very little to bring experts into a studio and ask them to blather. More, some are so lazy that they keep repeating the same on call analyst as if they are experts on every subjects who've done in depth research. You can tell by the superficiality of the answers that that isn't the case. These aren't objective political scientists, sociologists, etc. They are shills for a POV. That means far too often you know exactly what is going to be said before the interview even begins.

 

Ultimately, you get what you pay for. When people decided not to pay for their news (newspapers) and started relying on blogs, twitter, and tv... the level of discourse and the degree of information dropped considerably. This, of course, makes politicians pretty happy. An ignorant population is that much easier to control.

agree with all of this, except the use of the word "expert."

Those people are not experts. They are professional arguers. I do not understand how anyone can watch TV news in 2017. They talk nonsense.

 

Not saying Print journalists are Pulitzer Prize quality out there, but the TV people are a disaster.

[Burgold]

3 minutes ago, BenningRoadSkin said:

 

Those people are not experts. They are professional arguers. I do not understand how anyone can watch TV news in 2017. They talk nonsense.

 

 

Too often, I agree with that.

 

A few years back, I ran afternoon programming on an international radio news bureau. We had some good people and some bums as hosts/reporters, but our mandate was to cover everything happening in the world, keep on top of breaking news, and never repeat a segment over a 4 hour daily stretch.

 

We had a staff of 6 reporters. I can't tell you how many times I had to throw my self into a studio with only five minutes to prep for a story. How do you know the ins and outs well enough to get at the truth? You try. I think I had a decent batting average. I was best on the Prism where I hosted a science program, but there the pieces were canned and I found time to read multiple articles about each discovery or advance. I also had the benefit of talking to the scientist who made that finding.

 

Overall though, it's a tough task. What's worse is the pundit model where your guest may not know the topic either, but as you said, is there to push a point of view. What's gained from that?

[Bozo the kKklown]

1 minute ago, Burgold said:

What's worse is the pundit model where your guest may not know the topic either, but as you said, is there to push a point of view. What's gained from that?

this is what a lot of these cable news shows do.

 

They are not interested in learning more or expanding a person's worldview. Its all about muddying the waters and just arguing based on their political belief and nothing else. Its a complete waste of time to sit through that garbage because you learned nothing.

[Burgold]

Yeah, I don't think I could have done TV. For one, the segments are too short. I've always liked to dig and wrestle, wander and wonder. That made me a good fit for the NPR/WAMU stuff I did and brought that over to VOR before they closed the bureau to convert it into a propaganda network. I'm not curt or rude enough to do TV. I also (despite my shameless book self-promotion) don't have a big enough ego to do a one person show like a Maddow or Rush.

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

17 minutes ago, BenningRoadSkin said:

GOP knows how to make white people feel good about being white and their privilege more than the Democrats do.

Didn't we iron this all out on here already? If I recall correctly, there was a 200 page thread on the subject last summer and the conclusion was that there's nothing wrong with white privilege. I'll look for it.

[Bozo the kKklown]

6 minutes ago, Burgold said:

Yeah, I don't think I could have done TV. For one, the segments are too short. I've always liked to dig and wrestle, wander and wonder. That made me a good fit for the NPR/WAMU stuff I did and brought that over to VOR before they closed the bureau to convert it into a propaganda network. I'm not curt or rude enough to do TV. I also (despite my shameless book self-promotion) don't have a big enough ego to do a one person show like a Maddow or Rush.

yeah, NPR is mostly long form and will allow a topic to gain some air. TV just isnt like that.

 

Its absolute garbage and there is no way to stem the tide because people love arguments and and shouting. Like you said, what can you possibly learn in a 3 minute segment?

[NoCalMike]

Another problem regardless of which political persuasion you fall under is that everything has turned into short form in order to elicit emotion over critical thinking and reflection.  I have fallen victim to this as well plenty of times.  Everyone is too busy to be bothered with actual news so they go for the eye-catching headline, but can barely be bothered to read the actual article.  I've seen plenty examples of people on facebook posting articles they clearly haven't read, based on the headline alone, and when you point out actual quotes or stats provided in the article itself, they either ignore you or delete the post all together because the sudden realization that the headline wasn't very accurate of the actual information in the article is too much for them to take I suppose.

 

As I've gotten older, I've grown to enjoy long form discussion/debate a lot more.  Hell, even something like Joe Rogan's podcast where he invites guests on from all walks of life and he sits down and has a 2-3 hour conversation with them, even guests he clearly doesn't agree with on certain issues.  It is pretty refreshing compared to the soundbite culture of what news has become on TV.

[Burgold]

Yup. Reporting is writing a postcard. You try to cram everything you can into the amount of minutes or inches you are given, but ultimately, it can never be comprehensive. This has always been the case. It's even true when I have a 23 minute segment. You can never cover everything, include all the perspective, precedents, and offshoots, but at least using the NPR or newspaper model you can get much closer. You can begin a good conversation instead of just having a shouting match with the last yeller the winner.

 

Yep,

 

NoCal is right. I know better, but I've been suckered by plenty of misleading headlines. Soundbites can be even worse (though if done well they are really a useful tool)

[mcsluggo]

[No Excuses]

 

[PF Chang]

There are real problems with the Democratic party but I don't think there's a good answer for all of the media whining. 

 

In general, you have to be pretty smart to be a good writer. Most smart people don't like Trump and the anti-intellectual, anti-expertise GOP. We could permanently relocate every journalist in the country to Kansas -- they would still have the same issues with objectively covering POTUS, who is constantly lying and seems genuinely clueless. 

 

Look at Trump's AP interview. I don't know how anyone reads that and says, you know what? The real problem here is the damn liberal media...

[TradeTheBeal!]

13 minutes ago, PF Chang said:

 

 

Look at Trump's AP interview. I don't know how anyone reads that and says, you know what? The real problem here is the damn liberal media...

 

Fire the Truth-Cannons!

[HOF44]

The real problem is income redistribution from the middle class to the top .1 percent.  People know that they can't get decent paying jobs and they are pissed. The Donald galvanized that pissiness with lies and straw men. But the dems just kinda ignored it other than Warren and Bernie.  Bernie was to far out there and Warren wasn't running. 

[NoCalMike]

Until money at large is out of politics or at least out of the campaign/election process the Dems are always going to be the ones who come off as hypocrites and "republican-lite" because while their principles may want certain things, at the end of the day they, for the most part, have to turn to the same big money interests for contributions.  When people say the system is rigged they aren't lying.   It's a catch-22 situation where you can stick to your principles but then likely don't raise the funding needed to win a general election or you end up doing what most of them do and rolling over on certain things in order to secure necessary funding.  We'll never know what Sanders would have run into in a general election.