The Good Old Days of Media

Al Gore suggested that the good old days of media were when newspapers ruled. Craig Forman of Yahoo! notes this.Television in the early days, few networks, one-way information transmission, did not require much knowledge on the part of the viewer/consumer. Gore lauds the pre-television glory days of print, and there is some truth in that. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were far more news organizations, more newspapers. Many cities had more than one newspaper. But one could argue that even with several newspapers, the marketplace of ideas was populated by the few with access to the papers. I mean, printing presses cost money.

Forman is veering away from big business media. Some of the other panelists, Andrew Heyward of CBS for example, are focused more on the reality of the economy of media.

Jennifer Feikin talks about how search engines are making things accessible. She’s from Google video.