Alice is one of the smartest people I know generally but specific to my interests, maybe the smartest person I know who understands digital media without working in it www.niemanlab.org/2024/12/the-... - ThreadSky

espiers.bsky.social • 78 days ago

Alice is one of the smartest people I know generally but specific to my interests, maybe the smartest person I know who understands digital media without working in it https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/12/the-mainstream-media-will-lose-its-last-grip-on-relevancy/

Comments

inmywoodshop.bsky.social•78 days ago

Wow some really great discussion in the comments here. As I scroll this platform I am struck by the array of independent news sources constantly promoting. We need a bridge that connects them. A central network that organizes the decentralized function of media. There’s no time for in-fighting now.

pjlm.bsky.social•78 days ago

I keep reading these things, and there is no real solution suggested. I don’t think leftists doing more research is going to help. There are lots of left leaning influencers. Build on that. Kamala was not far from tying the popular vote.

stano.bsky.social•78 days ago

📌

azwebdude.bsky.social•78 days ago

Also, the right wing influencers, like Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, were propped up by truckloads of foreign money pumped in to influence our elections. What % of Twitter likes and comments for those guys are from bots farms? 40%? Does the left have the equivalent? Of course not

boboinparadise.bsky.social•78 days ago

"Profitable" becuz subsidized.
"left-wing billionaires are unlikely to support creators who advocate for socialism or the abolition of wealth hoarding."
Which left wing billionaires is that then?
Don't say Dorsey or Soros, they're not LW.
Like a phony construct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Basis_of_a_Backward_Society

refried-dan.bsky.social•78 days ago

I was thinking about this today especially in light of more people following social media for news than actual news outlets. I think the big issue is that news media has a different set of laws they have to follow vs podcasts like Joe Rogan and the now defunct info wars. (1/2)

refried-dan.bsky.social•78 days ago

News media have strict laws and guidelines that the alternative media doesn’t. There’s nothing that I’m aware of that says podcasters must tell the truth, get 2 or more sources, etc before posting. So… I can absolutely see MSM is either going to evoke or die

mdpoppa.bsky.social•78 days ago

There's little law that says any media outlet has to tell the truth at all, aside from a few exceptions; libel, etc. There's no exception for 'News' aside maybe from guild guidelines and such (which are toothless).

refried-dan.bsky.social•78 days ago

I was under the impression that there is case law specific to news reporting. Not so much in law written specifically for news media, but law created through cases that set up the rules of journalism. I am not in that field and can only google it for myself, so I’ll take any help you can provide

mdpoppa.bsky.social•77 days ago

Not a lawyer either, so coming from the same overall perspective - I'm not aware of any case law requiring such rules, and not aware of any esp applying to the Press. There are very few exceptions (libel, fraud, incitement, etc). Afaik, there is no special 'News' category allowing such.

houndsofgeorge.bsky.social•78 days ago

dwaynefuhlhage.bsky.social•78 days ago

I've been too stressed to read any news outside of my professional regulatory and sustainability lane. Snippets filter through here when I don't have enough words muted.

Billionaire and Nepotism Baby owners have made it easy to check out from the newspapers of record.

meritcandour.bsky.social•78 days ago

Adios, Mainstream Media
You SUCK
Royal Canadian Moose Cock
LIKE CHAMPIONS🏆

colinwakefield.bsky.social•78 days ago

Thanks for pointing us to this. Great read

honestcanadian.bsky.social•76 days ago

📌

realgraceunderfire.bsky.social•78 days ago

This is bleak, and there appear to be no solutions to it.

wrigleyfield.bsky.social•78 days ago

I think organizing in real life is still the alternative worth trying.

buddhaclauser.bsky.social•78 days ago

The people who actually understand what is taking place are so disparate-how do we bring them together and then amplify their message and the reality of what we are being subjected to and by whom.

wrigleyfield.bsky.social•78 days ago

How much do you talk with your neighbors, coworkers, other people you see in daily life? Do you know their political views? Can you pick a local issue you feel passionately about & find ways to invite people to talk with you about it if they want? Can you have something easy to ask them to do?

1/2

wrigleyfield.bsky.social•78 days ago

Can you host a dinner party, relevant movie night, or some other social gathering (invite ppl widely & see who comes) that's also raising money for a cause you care about? Can part of it be telling ppl why you care so much about it & giving them the chance (if they want) to share why they came?

2/

wrigleyfield.bsky.social•78 days ago

The point of these suggestions is a starting point to think abt how you (1) draw ppl around you; (2) create a situation where you learn from each other & together; (3) find ways to take action together. Actions can be small but:
-don't be paralyzed
-sometimes small works
-you're building yr network

buddhaclauser.bsky.social•78 days ago

I live in NYC. Nearly everyone I know thinks much the same as I do. Since the election-I’m learning about very young ppl who wanted Trump or voted for him. For ignorant reasons. I am not sure how I can hold sway w them-they’re algorithmically manipulated. Maybe right now I am on listening tour.

clear-eye.bsky.social•78 days ago

This goes beyond political parties. Society to function needs a shared reality.

berlinskyjohn.bsky.social•78 days ago

📌

vpofcommonsense.bsky.social•77 days ago

They are the only ones to blame. Period.

daisydot.bsky.social•78 days ago

Thx for sharing this. Alice nails it. No easy solution here, just hard hard work and lots of money. The foreign influence can’t be ignored either.

caerbannogkitty.bsky.social•78 days ago

I feel like there's a good intersection here between what she's writing and what Taylor Lorenz has been saying about influencer culture that if combined, would be very illuminating and infuriating because at the end of the day I don't see a way out of the hyper-targeted media world the far right has

espiers.bsky.social•78 days ago

They’re actually not very targeted. I think a big part of their success is that they spend insane amounts of money and throw shit against the wall

amyalexca.bsky.social•78 days ago

This part of Alice’s piece, especially resonates: “…the mainstream press still does not cover issues of concern to Black Americans. 75% of U.S. journalists are white, and most Black Americans believe that the mainstream media depicts Black people negatively.” S’why I wrote “Uncovering Race” in 2011.

king-parrot.bsky.social•78 days ago

The mainstream media lost its relevancy a long time ago.

riverparkmatt.bsky.social•78 days ago

This is exactly what we need to understand and then use it to build our own storyline

mikacooper.bsky.social•78 days ago

She took a course from me in the ‘90s at Wellesley. She was the best student in the class, unsurprisingly. So lovely to follow her successes since!

viob2024.bsky.social•78 days ago

Depressing and true; the pro-democracy billionaires will not invest in democracy.

jonherrin.bsky.social•78 days ago

It's not like MSM hasn't already become incredibly partisan. They're becoming irrelevant by their own design.

billbennett.bsky.social•78 days ago

It's very bleak.

marciano.bsky.social•78 days ago

This is indeed a very sharp observation... and a very troubling one

thedesertsage.bsky.social•78 days ago

📌

jleahul.bsky.social•78 days ago

Does she also moonlight as Oscar winning actress Jodie Foster?

jessupio.bsky.social•78 days ago

I wonder if we take the long game and double down on emphasizing media literacy and critical thinking and checking sources in our schools? Maybe over time some of that info will take hold...as long as the schools maintain their independence🤷‍♂️

robinbrenizer.bsky.social•78 days ago

We won’t watch media that shows Trump speaking. We already know what he has to say. His yammering and lying is nauseating.

grahamclester.bsky.social•78 days ago

I think a big part of this is that most non-journalists have little to no concrete understanding of journalistic ethics & best practices. I think that giving the public a better grasp of these could be an effective way of providing people with the tools they need to "Do their own research" sanely.

espiers.bsky.social•78 days ago

I don’t think that’s true of real journalistic institutions but the older generations have a “both sides” mentality that they think is fairness but privileges lies as equivalent

ricoradeaux.bsky.social•78 days ago

Well said. No amount of explaining journalistic ethics and best practices matter when those ethics and practices have brought us to this precipice. Both sides fairness are simply the wrong ethics and practices for our times.

espiers.bsky.social•78 days ago

The younger generations know it’s BS. We need leadership turnover

malthusjohn.bsky.social•77 days ago

Age limits should be right behind income/wealth limits for anyone in politics/leadership.

Anyone who "represents" the public should be close to the mean, not far-flung special interests, or one foot in the grave.

espiers.bsky.social•78 days ago

I would happily work for someone much younger than me who gets that balance is not both sides, and neither can be had at the expense of truth

smokeymom.bsky.social•78 days ago

Me too. They are there. Keys help them out

r5-to-philly.bsky.social•78 days ago

I wonder if you can get a comment from the unanimously elected new leader of the Democrats in the Senate. Chuck Schumer

espiers.bsky.social•78 days ago

Well he doesn’t work in media so probably not but politics has a similar problem

juliaangwin.com•78 days ago

Yes! Killing the failed notion of objectivity as performative neutrality is part of the solution I propose in this piece I just published today that addresses what @alicetiara.bsky.social so accurately diagnoses. https://shorensteincenter.org/future-trustworthy-information-learning-online-content-creators/

boboinparadise.bsky.social•78 days ago

There's nothing more objective than cold, hard facts.

alicetiara.bsky.social•78 days ago

Thx @juliaangwin.com & @espiers.bsky.social , you guys are fighting the good fight 🙏🏻

grahamclester.bsky.social•78 days ago

You make a lot of interesting and actually illuminating points in this analysis.

abhidhabi5.bsky.social•77 days ago

Disagree — the greatest mistakes journalists make is when they fail to be objective and forget that the truth is often nuanced. See, e.g., Iraq War. The great reporter John F. Burns, expressed his regret about doing so in Iraq in this moving farewell column.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/the-things-i-carried-back.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

grahamclester.bsky.social•78 days ago

Yes, it's actually astonishing that major media outlets failed to discriminate between giving both sides of a legitimate debate and giving both sides as a sort of fundamentalist dogma when one side is either lying outright or speaking from a la-la-land perspective.

espiers.bsky.social•78 days ago

This is something that I have experienced directly and Dems and their big donors really do not understand. No one wants to step up in a big way.

suepat.bsky.social•78 days ago

I have a problem with promoting 'influencers'. People should not be able to manipulate other people so easily. TEACH CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS!!!

johnmahony.bsky.social•78 days ago

“Propped up by billionaire conservatives” doesn’t yet get enough attention, nor is there an effective counter on the left. All attempts have fallen flat because they have lost money and folded.

mtt88h.bsky.social•78 days ago

You know. This is also a huge problem. Influencers now have the power to spread their message across many platforms. This message have no requirements to be truthful. They have a unchecked power, which even journalists doesn't have, to say anything about anyone. They are even being paid to do it.

bellinghamsterd.bsky.social•78 days ago

Can democracy and justice even compete in the money game, let alone win?

rini1983.bsky.social•78 days ago

I'm gonna say something controversial. I think the left isn't great about allowing moral/value disagreements, which is why we haven't connected as well as the Rogans of the world. We tend to insist everyone agree on everything and we police speech, a lot. We'd do better to allow for more discourse.

envy2024.bsky.social•78 days ago

They did understand. Harris went to influencers beyond corp media Dems have to dumb down their message. People get information fast & short & repetitive & the voters aren’t that deep.Kinda like grade school mentality.

espiers.bsky.social•78 days ago

She did but the left is not organized in the same way that the right is. There are not that many organized influencer groups and they’re underfunded. One of the biggest ones was run by a kid who was also a FT college student and needed help with the admin basics, couldn’t get enough funding

envy2024.bsky.social•78 days ago

No it isn’t. They need to change the way they talk so dumb MAGA understand. Ex. They don’t know what facism means! Gotta say the definition in a sound bite.

espiers.bsky.social•78 days ago

lol. I have a family full of MAGA voters (and it seems like you don’t.) They like authoritarianism because they think it oppresses people they hate but not them. You cannot win them over with logic or education

espiers.bsky.social•78 days ago

They want fascism—that they’re personally exempt from

jocetta.bsky.social•78 days ago

"They like authoritarianism because they think it oppresses people they hate but not them"

Is there a way to get a wedge in and start prying things open a bit by somehow persuading/showing them they're oppressed as well? You know, when the leopards start noshing on their faces?

hoptimusprime.bsky.social•78 days ago

@benwikler.bsky.social absolutely understands this.

raiastar.bsky.social•75 days ago

I am reposting and following. Your perspectives are solid and factual and I value the content. It may not be what we want to hear and read, yet we need to come to terms with what we're up against. Thank you.

mirya.bsky.social•78 days ago

Emily Farris and I discuss this all the time. If we would just say a few nice things about sheriffs, there's so much money for speaking gigs, media appearances, board positions. The opportunities on the left are... talking to equally underresourced journalists about their stories.

flexasauruswrex.bsky.social•78 days ago

OK, but nobody wants to find Chapo Traphouse except Putin

espiers.bsky.social•78 days ago

Chapo is dirtbag left (and I say that as someone who thinks they play an important role in forcing people to talk about things they don’t want to.) But most leftists who do stuff on the ground are not upper middle class white guys or anyone who listens to a podcast

nyc118.bsky.social•78 days ago

Has anyone matched the decline in MSM with the decline in literacy?

espiers.bsky.social•78 days ago

That would be interesting but you’d also have to define MSM. I would bet it tracks re newspapers but not news consumption overall

nyc118.bsky.social•78 days ago

Yeah. When people think they get “news” from Joe Rogan or random influencers online.

nolageurl.bsky.social•78 days ago

Boom! There have been many of us literally writing and meeting and begging @dnc to step up and counter them in kind 2 to 1. But there was/is only patronizing head nodding. And zero serious planning that could have been done years ago.
1/2

nolageurl.bsky.social•78 days ago

My first meeting w Dems about this and the need for us to at least be on AM radio was *Before* Trump ran the first time! @ocasio-cortez.house.gov @repdangoldman.bsky.social @repraskin.bsky.social
2/2

assholeparadox.bsky.social•78 days ago

Nailed it like Jesus.

tweber.bsky.social•78 days ago

A worthwhile read … thanks for highlighting. It feels like it’s getting even harder to process what’s on the other side of this gap yet more important than ever to step up as you say.

robinbrenizer.bsky.social•78 days ago

It’s MUCH harder to report facts than propaganda.

sluggishcheetah.bsky.social•78 days ago

Billionaires are very unlikely to advocate for there not being billionaires anymore, same story with millionaires.
Rich people will not save us.

trumpistheenemy.bsky.social•78 days ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyJvIvnUlHM this is a detailed how-to if Democrats ever get it together to build a similar influence model

charlesxavier.bsky.social•78 days ago

Also (and unsurprisingly) there are many, many, many more right wing billionaires than left wing billionaires. Son there’s simply more people willing to pay (and a lot more money) for subsidies to the Daily Wire than for a left equivalent.

hardyboynate.bsky.social•75 days ago

This is one of the greatest failings of Democrats/the left and I have been struggling for an answer for years. Self-funded/subscriber based outlets may succeed, but they won’t reach the critical mass necessary to counter the right’s minor league of personalities with seemingly limitless funding.

hicarolbutler.bsky.social•78 days ago

The author says we need to "learn from history about how such rifts can be bridged" but doesn't give any examples of any history where such rifts were bridged or any hints as to what lessons can be learned. I'm still in the dark as to how to respond to the disinformation.

boboinparadise.bsky.social•78 days ago

It makes me think about the broadbill revolution that led to the American & French & English Revolutions.
Nb, all 3 post revolutionary societies were far from idyllic, no matter how we color them today.
Inequality gets replaced w a different inequality, but 1 step upward to the surface.
So it goes.

nanpowell.bsky.social•77 days ago

Exactly my issue with the article. Seems the only recommendation is to study the trends?

hd.al•77 days ago

True

sleepy-peaches.bsky.social•78 days ago

I bet Alice is a freak in the sheets, something about that smile

etherealhothouse.bsky.social•78 days ago

Some devastating truth here; I fear, absent some tremendous disaster that forces all of us to acknowledge some semblance of a common ground, that the means to reverse this rather terrifying spiral will continue to elude us.

smartchae.bsky.social•78 days ago

Our grandchildren will be surprised to learn that the New York Times used to be a newspaper and wasn’t always just a company that makes word-based mobile games.

farwent.bsky.social•78 days ago

📌

jwkropf.bsky.social•78 days ago

Seems like part of a trend that we’re abandoning facts for feelings. To be followed by a new dark ages and maybe a second enlightenment?

pauliewaulie.bsky.social•78 days ago

📌

bcreality.bsky.social•78 days ago

Let's not forget #sadopopulism as well at the core of the messaging.

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