Mainstream Media’s Fall from Leadership

The recent accouncement by the Christian Science Monitor that it would cease printing a paper edition and concentrate online is simply another sign that traditional mainstream journalism is crumbling. It’s one subject covered extensively in my new book, The Media Savvy Leader, to be published in early January.

It’s easy to see where the Monitor is headed - toward an attempt to sell online subscriptions to the paper. Other newspapers have tried, and all have failed because there are too many free online news resources. So, I predict the Monitor will ultimately sink within a year.

As the news audience has flocked to online sources in recent years, some mainstream media, like The New York Times, have been grappling with the issue and seeking solutions, while other newspapers, like the Washington Post, remain clueless to the rapidly evolving trend. I highly recommend this story in the Times by David Carr and all the related reader comments. In today’s mainstream media, few leaders remain aside from The Times.

At the same time, it’s interesting to watch another dinosaur of mainstream media - network and local television news. Traditional television newscasts have used the same formats and formulas for more than four decades. Even though technology has changed during that time, news presentation formats have not been updated one inch, leading to extraordinarily dated news-chuckle-weather-chuckle-sports-chuckle newscast styles. I predict that it will only be a matter of time before TV news, which has been losing audience for years, finally wakes up and goes into panic mode to remain in business.