Opinion: The coming irrelevancy
Posted on February 7, 2012 by achernow
This was originally published on my Google+ Profile.
I hate to say this to my friends in traditional media. We’re becoming irrelevant. Sure we still have the brand power of a television newsroom, and there are still a lot of newspapers out there who are doing the investigative pieces we just don’t have the room, time, or resources to do. But by-in-large, we’re becoming irrelevant in the world of digital journalism.
I submit into evidence, this New York Times article on BuzzFeed. Online media, not a traditional outlet, broke the story of McCain’s endorsement. A few years ago, heck, even a year ago, that would almost be unheard of. It would have been the AP, or ABC/CBS/CNN/NBC, or the Washington Post/New York Times/Chicago Tribune who would have broken the news. And honestly, I suspect that the student website at VA Tech may have actually broken the story, and that Joe Paterno had actually died, and that the family covered that up until the morning, when traditional media would have been staffed up and able to get the word out.
The “TL;DR” of this is: It’s only a matter of time before sites like BuzzFeed and HuffPo start breaking things more often, pushing us even further into the background.
This is my opinion. It in no way reflects the opinion of the newsroom I work for.
