"The sky is actually falling right now:" Good or bad?

If anyone's got some good insights into the direction our mass media are going in, it should be David Carr, the New York Times media critic and long-time writer for the alternative press in Washington, DC and Minneapolis. The media are now Carr's beat for the Times, and in addition to his regular writing he also composes the Times's Carpetbagger blog. Carr speaks about his take on the media next Wednesday, February 15 at SUNY Brockport's MetroCenter in downtown Rochester. And judging by this interview for the Rochester City newspaper, he's got a lot to say.

Carr is less than ecstatic about what he sees in media-land, though he seems simultaneously energized and shocked at the changes underway. City's Krestia DeGeorge kicks off her piece by noting that "he almost passed on the chance to be a media columnist with the Times" as he was so tired of media issues. But he "came around," and he now says he's glad he did, because he has something to say. And that brings us to his quote about the sky "actually falling right now." He thinks it's "fun and interesting and scary all at the same time to watch the ways in which media are atomizing and becoming commoditized." So, it's a mixed bag, then?

Yes, indeed. There's lots of cool stuff going on, but Carr seems to be concerned about the general lack of news awareness among young folks today. And the changes in technology aren't helping as much as everyone assumes. No matter how many blogs and news groups inhabit the Internet, we still absolutely need a "robust press"--both mainstream and alternative--because that's the only place where this stuff will get critically analyzed. He points out something that's pretty obvious to anyone of my generation, but might not be to someone in their teens or early twenties:

I think people assume that, "Oh, we'll be able to use the web to assemble a portrait of the world beyond our town," and the fact is that Google News or whatever RSS feeder you've got, most of it is just annotating coverage. Somebody has to make phone calls somewhere in order for news to function.

Where are the data inputs coming from? Where is the information coming from? In other words, who is making the phone calls? Who is sending the emails? You cannot have a robust discourse without a database of current information. And if the information that's being culled through is just government-issued data without a critical eye or editing, then you're going to end up with a fairly dumb republic.

There's a conceit that young people get their news from the Jon Stewart show or get their news from the web, but there was a study not long ago at Ball State, and if you're talking, say, 18 to 24, young people just don't get their news. That's all there is to it. They don't have a strong interest in it. So there you have a very attractive advertising demographic where there's no upside in serving them with that kind of information, because they have no interest or need. There's not much news on a Playstation, man.