How traditional media lose audience to the Web

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By Matthew Sheffield

Over the past 10 years or so, one of the most commonly asked questions in media circles is why the public seems to be increasingly tuning out and unsubscribing from America's establishment media.

Various reasons have been offered, including the emergence of interactive media, increased work hours, more commuting - all of which aren't without merit.

One explanation that usually isn't discussed is that, just maybe, the public is sick of the media picking and choosing what they think is news.

While it is amusing to see journalists who oppose government media intervention on behalf of the public arrogating that privilege to themselves, we'd all be better off without the laughs because it is frustrating the national discourse.

Instead of reporting the news, far too many journalists have now taken it upon themselves to protect the public from it.

In the recent past, media self-censorship was pretty near impossible to get around, except in towns where two or more newspapers with differing ideologies circulated.

With the advent of the Internet, however, dissatisfied news consumers have a world of alternative sources. And they're leaving in droves.

Who can blame them? If you wanted to see good news from Iraq until very recently, you pretty much had to turn to the blogosphere or read the official government reports on the Web.

If you wanted to see the brutal decapitation of Nick Berg by Islamic radicals, you had to go online.

Ditto if you wanted to find out the party affiliation of Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former Democratic governor of New York. Bill Clinton's infamous affair with Monica Lewinsky was buried news until Internet impresario Matt Drudge brought it to light.