Here is the News - its free, its mainly cr*p, and its coming to a PC near you

Interesting article in the Daily Beast about the future of - well, itself really - and the Rest of The Media (bracketed comments are mine):

- The Rise of Undernews (no reporters anymore, you must rely on bloggers for investigative reporting)

- Go Online or Go Home (meedja must go online pronto, regardless of the nagging detail that most make no money doing it)

- That Goes for You Too, Newspapers (As above, but even more money lost but hey look at the link love)

- Let's Talk About Sexism (and they will, in droves - but I loved the point made that Sarah Palin has put the whole femist movement in a quandary)

- Alter-Egomaniacs (well known Journos will blog about their hobbies as well as their work)

- Black (Media) Power (as for sexism, but in colour)

- Remember Iraq? Neither Does Anyone Else (the cameras are leaving, time to pull the troops out)

Now far be it for us to point out that this analysis serves the Beast's position rather well, or that what they are pointing to is not a "New journalism" or even "New news" but by and large the rise of Op-Ed sans Facts.

However, we would point out that it seems that the real medium term implication is that a two tiered market for "real" news is emerging - those who want to know what is really going on will buy such as The Economist (which pays its people to do research) and watch the BBC (ditto, well for now anyway), the rest will theoretically exist on their Daily Me of limited width, factless opinion. I see this as part of the same trend that wants to treat scientific fact as but one opinion in a debate, or even treat maths accuracy as a moveable feast.

Quite why, at this point of a fairly productive 300 year Age of Reason, the richest and best educated populations on the planet want to throw all this learning away for something that is in effect not too dissimilar from what would once have been called propaganda (in its widest definition) and return to the information equivalent of the Feudal Age is beyond me.

But then, its free, so that explains it all..................

Or does it? Will this dismal future really emerge, or will the Silent Majority, once they have sampled the delights of such User Generated Content from We The Media, start to go back to edited, curated content albeit with more interactivity?