What Will Become of Blogs?

What WIll Become of Blogs?

What Will Become of Blogs? Charting The Transition of Blogs From “The Commons” To Conglomeration Using Radio As A Historical Perspective Fall 2005
Section One: Radio Origins: Morse Code and Early Radio After Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1837, developers began to look for a means of messaging others without the need for telegraph wire. Guglielmo Marconi, who later invented the telephone, succeeded in this advance in 1895 by developing a means of long distance messaging via electric waves and frequencies, using traditional Morse code (Turow, 351). By pressing a key, the operator could send messages in Morse code by energizing a rotating commutating spark gap. The rotating commutator produced a tone in the receiver, where a simple spark gap would produce a hiss, indistinguishable from static (Wikipedia 1). While the Italian government was uninterested in Marconi’s development, the British Empire was. As the British Empire was vastly spread out, the Marconi Company equipped commercial and military ships of England, the United States, and other countries, in order for ship communication “with each other and with shore points around the world” (Turow 351). The advent of radio as we know it began in the early 1900’s, when Reginald Fessenden pioneered a means of transmitting speech and music instead of Morse code, via a phonograph. Similarly, Lee De Forest’s Audion vacuum made radiotelephony clearer and allowed for the audition of the radio systems through speakers instead of the traditional headphones. De Forest also had the idea to send out continuous music, news, and other materials. This concept was named “broadcasting,” “from an agricultural term meaning to scatter seed over a broad area rather than in particular places” (Turow, 351).
Further Development, Economics and Social Implications of Traditional Radio It took a few decades before De Forest’s vision was fully implemented, and the United States government had a hefty decision to make. Should they regulate radio and control it publicly, or allow for private industry to develop it? The U.S. government decided to create a patent trust involving AT&T, Westinghouse, and GE, collectively called the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). With this trust, two changing factors were created: the development of advertising to support radio, and the creation of networks to spread advertiser-sponsored programming around the country. This monopoly was split a decade later, into the separate companies that initially formed the RCA. The next step in creating traditional radio as we know it was the formation of radio networks, designed to attract advertisers by linking RCA’s owned-and-operated stations and other stations such as network affiliates around the country through AT&T’s telephone lines. The advertisers’ programs could therefore be heard by the larger populous, and the cash received by RCA could be shared by the linked stations (Turow, 354). In the 1930’s, investors began to think of radio as a major source of income and means of promotion forof record releases. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) implemented royalties, charging stations and the networks an annual license fee for broadcasting music. Angered by the amount of money that ASCAP was charging, broadcasters took up arms and formed the Broadcast Music Incorporated Company (BMI). Radio’s programming also included non-music, with content similar to that of television today. At that time, three networks – NBC Red and Blue and CBS – dominated the radio. Due to the power of NBC’s ownership, the FCC and the Supreme Court intervened and ordered NBC to sell one of their stations, NBC Blue, which became the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). During this same time, news agencies began to see the increasingly important benefit of the radio, as well as the pressure of competition for advertising money, and started to construct wire services such as the AP (Turow, 354). President Franklin Roosevelt also understood the importance of radio, and hosted a number of “fireside chats” to promote his administration’s policies.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 The Telecommunications Act of 1996, better known as the Telecom Act, led to unprecedented deregulation and media consolidation. As a result, two companies, Clear Channel and Infinity, now control one-third of all radio advertising revenue (in some markets, they control up to 90% of the ad dollars). In reality, the Telecom Act lifted ownership limits for radio stations and allowed for as many as eight signals from the same broadcasters. Prior to the Telecom Act, markets were tightly regulated. Broadcasters were permitted to own no more than 40 stations nationally, and could control only 2 per regional market (The Experiment). The passage of the Telecom Act clearly appeased radio groups. “We were watching the vote come down in a hotel room in ’95 and we were high-fiving each other,” said a former head of a major radio group, anonymously. “We knew the multiple-station deals we’d been working on would come to fruition” (Boehlert).
Fallout: Media Consolidation & Rise of Clear Channel Since the passage of the Telecom Act, 10,000 radio station transactions have taken place, resulting in 1,100 fewer station owners, a number that is down nearly 30% since 1996. Clear Channel, the largest conglomeration, now owns nearly 1,200 stations, up from 48 in 1996. These media giants claimed that deregulation would spur competition, lower prices, and provide for better service, when they have, in fact, merely allowed groups to become larger, without fear of direct competition and more able to extract greater profit. Smaller stations cannot compete, and listeners seem to be “paying the price,” (McChesney). “Radio has become homogenized,” said former FCC Chairman Ness. “Radio is not as alive, not as immediate. Because what’s happened in large markets is that you have two large players divide up the formats so they’re not competing head to head anymore.” She suggested that “consolidation has eliminated competition,” (Boehlert, Salon.com). Furthermore, the Telecom Act has eliminated nearly 10,000 radio-related jobs, due to rampant cost cutting. “The unintended consequences of the act have changed irrecoverably the face of radio,” said Ness. Though the consolidation of media was described by Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) as, “...not only is the decision made by the (FCC)…the worst decision made during my 27 years overseeing them, it is the worst decision ever made by the FCC. Ever," things do appear to be changing for the better. Under the Bush administration more people than ever are aware of the negative impacts of consolidated media. 56% of people believe that the media is being manipulated by the government and 73% believe the feedback that government officials are receiving is controlled and prepared for. “It's almost a truism that democracy depends on independent modes of information gathering and distribution of communication and so on,” says famed Linguistics professor Noam Chomsky (Metsnik).
Summary of Radio The history of the radio shows the transgression of a bottom-up, user-to-user, interactive method of communication to the gradual shift towards the top-down method that has developed in infrastructure over the last hundred years. While users of the citizen’s band radio still exist, and barriers to entry are low within this process, these communications get lost in the wake of major networks, whose presence overshadows them. But, to be a big-time player in radio, barriers to entry are nearly impenetrable, due to the large hegemony that now exists. The current top-down structure leaves a lot to be desired. There remains “the need to foster an expansive policy dialogue…given the rise of media conglomerates, the emphasis of security concerns in the post-9/11 environment, the shrinking of the commons, and the convergence of digital media, to name a few” (Garcia et. al., 2005
Section Two: Blogs Much like amateur “ham” radio, individuals are given “their own broadcast equipment to communicate with others directly.” To note, ham radio also had logs called “glogs” that were personal diaries made using wearable computers in the early 1980’s. And like CB radios, bloggers give themselves “handles” via blog titles or URL addresses.
The First Blogs The first site available to users who wished to create blogs was Open Diary, which was launched in 1998, and sported over 2,000 diaries as of 1999. The idea was to make diaries “open” to the public, who could then comment and exchange. Around this time, other resources such as Blogger and LiveJournal were formed. These sites allowed for easy use and communities formed within each site. Among the “first established political blogs with U.S.-wide audiences” were Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit, Jerome Armstrong's MyDD.com, and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga's DailyKos -- all of which launched now-widely read blogs as early as 2000 (Beutler). Since 2003, “blogs have gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping, or spinning news stories” (Wikipedia 3). The blogging community seemed to emerge in notoriety during the 2003 Iraq war, “which saw both left-wing and right-wing bloggers taking measured and passionate points of view that did not reflect the traditional left-right divide. The blogs which gathered news on Iraq, both left and right, exploded in popularity” (Wikipedia 3). By the end of 2003 top rated blogs Instapundit, Daily Kos, and Atrios were receiving over 75,000 unique visitors per day. Dean For America and the Rise of the Candidate Blogs: The Beginning of the Top-Down Process The Dean For America campaign is what, quintessentially, brought blogging to the mainstream. When presidential candidate Howard Dean (D-VA) hired Joe Trippi as his manager, the political media consultant immediately insisted on the creation of one. Trippi, being a fan of open-source technology, decided that a blog would be an excellent way to involve “the commons.” The blog, specifically, was designed to take an open source philosophy of posing questions on the blog, and having readers comment with their opinions. Trippi would, in accordance, read the comments and implement them in the campaign (Trippi, 145). Trippi noted that when assessing the audience that this infrastructure had built, “it became obvious pretty quickly that a couple of dozen sleep-deprived political junkies in our corner offices of the Dean campaign couldn’t possibly match the brainpower and resourcefulness of six-hundred thousand Americans. We couldn’t see every hole and every flaw that they could see. For one thing, we were too close to it. They were any number of times one of those six hundred thousand came up with something that should have been obvious to us. There were countless instances where we were trying to figure out or next move and someone on the Internet came to our rescue” (146-7). According to Lawrence Lessig, founder of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, the Dean campaign blog’s key to success was its ability “to turn the audience into the speaker. A well-structured blog inspires both reading and writing. And by getting the audience to type, candidates get the audience committed. Engagement replaces reception, which in turn leads to real space action” (Lessig). The Dean campaign illustrated “yet another context into which open source ideals can usefully migrate. Set a framework within which your clients can become your contributors, and you will have many more clients and contributors. As Trippi commented about a blog fundraising challenge that raised more than a $2,000-a-seat vice presidential lunch, ‘Who can argue with $508,000 coming in over a $3 turkey sandwich?’ (Lessig). With the momentum that Dean gained, candidates created various watered down forms of blogs in an attempt to catch up to the Dean campaign. But when these campaigns implemented their own versions, they did not follow the same design that Lessig believed made Dean’s so successful. For example, by the time the Bush campaign felt as though they should create their own blog, it featured a more top-down approach, with content limited to press releases instead of invitations for readers to participate and even failed to create a comments section at all. That trend continues today, and is indicative of a change from blogs being used in their original capacity of a bottom-up tool, towards a top-down publicity outlet.
Mainstream Media Enters the Sphere At the beginning of the Democratic National Convention in late July 2004, MSNBC began their first entry to the blogosphere. Entitled “Hardblogger,” it served as a crossover blog for Chris Matthews’ Hardball. The first entry, interestingly enough, was by MSNBC’s newest media consultant, Joe Trippi. Following suit since that time have been: NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, creating a blog entited “The Daily Nightly;” MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann’s “Bloggerman;” CBS News’ “Public Eye;” and ABC News’ “The Note” and “NewsChatter,” the former featuring general commentary and analysis, and the latter featuring blogs from ABC News correspondents. Of all listed, only CBS News’ “Public Eye” has a comments section on their weblog. Crossover strategies also emerged when, facing declining subscriptions, the Washington Post began featuring blog content from Andrew Sullivan. “The 'Guest Blogger' feature is one of several initiatives by the site to increase interactivity with users and help facilitate the 'national conversation' around news and issues that the Web has made possible,” said executive editor Jim Brady. Said Sullivan, “the web is about experimenting; and it's long overdue that the independent blogosphere and the mainstream media find better ways of communicating” (DeFoore). In October of 2005, vertical integration strategies to encorporate blogs into more mainstrean and traditional media came into the limelight when Weblogs Inc, a blog media company, was bought by America Online for $25M. The company's blogs have had an exponential trajectory, with sites like Engadget, Autoblog, BloggingBaby, and others. In total, the company has about 130 bloggers, with about 15 full time employees (Ali). AOL plans to “integrate the blogs into its AOL.com portal by linking to the best entries. Visitors to AOL's Moviefone, for instance, might see referrals to Weblogs' Cinematical blog on films.” Jim Bankoff, AOL's executive vice president for programming and products, “said the company will work with the Weblogs team to create additional journals that fit with AOL's existing lineup of programming channels and new ones that emerge” (AP). Section 3: Analysis Unlike radio, which has a limited amount of frequencies available for broadcasting, the Internet has a nearly unlimited amount of “spectrum.” And unlike starting a radio station in the wake of huge conglomerations, barriers to entry are not prevalent in the traditional sense. However, social barriers to entry are present. Stars have emerged, resulting not in economic barriers to entry but in social barriers, such as popularity and influence. “Clear social heirchies have emerged within and among blogger communities so that some blogs are considered to be more prestigious than others” (Garcia et. al. 2005, Packwood nd). Similarly, “some bloggers have more influence than others when they are known to be expert on a given topic in the offline world” (Garcia et. al., 2005). As traditional media moves in on the blogosphere, everyday citizens are more likely to flock to online news outlets that they trust, such as NBC’s Daily Nightly blog with Brian Williams, or Washington Post’s blog. Additionally, blog rolls have created new types of networks, where popular blogs breed new popular blogs, based on who is linked to whom. Thus, it is becoming increasingly difficult for a new up-and-coming blogger to gain influence and prestige. Much like with deregulation of radio and lack of competition due to conglomerates, smaller bloggers cannot compete with these giant bloggging powerhouses. Even Joe Trippi is experiencing difficulty entering the sphere with his new blog at joetrippi.com, as he receives an average of merely 2 or 3 comments per entry, as opposed to what he might have received back in the days of the Dean campaign. The integrity of the blogging institution itself is compromised when top-down blogging sites, without the “commons” approach of interactivity, slowly replace those blogs that do follow Lessig’s model. The result could be a total change from the original intention of blogs, to something radically different. The actual result cannot be predicted, but given the close similarities between the development and evolution of radio and that of blogs, a growing top-down approach could be expected. Just as citizens still use “ham” and CB radio’s today, traditional blogs will probably never be eradicated, but will likely become less influential. Whether or not the emerging networks and processes will become the dominant force on the Internet remains to be seen. One can only hope, however, that the Internet will serve to fulfill our society’s need for “a robust public dialogue centered on communication and information” (Garcia 2002). REFERENCES “AOL Acquires 85 Blog Sites.” AP. 16 Oct. 2005. 3 Nov. 2005. <http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/05/10/16/100bus_aol001.cfm> Ali, R. "Exclusive: Weblogs Inc Being Bought Out By America Online." PaidContent.org 5 Oct. 2005. 6 Nov. 2005. <http://paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2005_10_05.shtml>. Beutler, William. Senior Writer/”Blogometer” Editor, National Journal’s Hotline. Personal Interview. 8 November 2005. Boehlert, Eric. “One Big Happy Channel?” Salon.com. 28 June, 2001. <http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/06/28/telecom_dereg/index.html>. DeForee, Jay. "Andrew Sullivan to Serve as WashingtonPost.com’s ‘Guest Blogger.’" Editor and Publisher.com 19 Sept. 2005. 6 Nov. 2005 <http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?schema=&vnu_content_id=1001139103>. Experiment, The. “Media Consolidation and the Homogenization of the Public Mindshare.” 28 June, 2001. <http://www.theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=1398>. Garcia, D.L. (2002). Crafting Communication Policy in a Competitive Environment. Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. New York, Marcel Dekker, Inc. 72. Garcia, D.L., E. Surles, and Qi Chen. (2005). Fostering a Communication Policy Dialogue: The Need for a Sustainable Communication Interface. Prepared for the Social Science Research Council Knowledge Report and Workshop. Lessig, Lawrence. “The New Road to the White House: How grassroots blogs are transforming presidential politics. Wired Magazine Nov. 2003. McChesney, Robert W. “The FCC Attack on the Freedom of the Press.” Chicago Media Watch. <http://www.chicagomediawatch.org/01_4_fcc.shtml>. Mestnik, Thomas. “Noam Chomsky Talks Media Concentration.” UCD Advocate. 9 April, 2003. < http://www.ucdadvocate.com/news/2003/04/09/LifeArts/Noam-Chomsky.Talks.Media.Concentration-413085.shtml>. Packwood, Nicolas. (nd) “Geography of the Blogosphere: Representing the Culture, Ecology and Community of Weblogs.” <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/geography_of_the_blogosphere.html>. Trippi, Joseph. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, The Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything. New York: Regan Books, 2004. 145-47. Turow, J. (2003). Media Today. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin. 351, 354. Wikipedia. “Blogs.” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs>. 1 Nov. 2005. Wikipedia. “Lee De Forest.” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_De_Forest>. 1 Nov. 2005. Wikipedia. “Spark Gap Transmitter.” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark-gap_transmitter>. 1 Nov. 2005.