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Death of the gatekeeper

6 comments on Death of the gatekeeper

Death of the gatekeeper
: Once upon a time, journalists were the gatekeepers to the audience and from power.

Then flacks took over the gatekeeping from power (they control access to the famous and powerful and fame is the fuel that fires media today).

Now the Web — and weblogs and interactivity — are taking over the gatekeeping to the audience, allowing the famous and powerful to bypass the gatekeepers and vice versa.

See this latest example from Lost Remote:

The old-media types are furious – but the Red Sox regularly posted on a fan site/messageboard to discuss the now-dead A-Rod for Manny Rodriguez trade. This culminated in a hilarious showdown on a local sports radio show. One sports writer was complaining how the Red Sox were trying to go “directly to the fans.” New Sox pitcher Curt Schilling called in – shut the writer up – and told him the web is the place to go if ballplayers want to get their story out unfiltered. Brilliant.

: See also Dan Gillmor on the Pentagon bypassing gatekeepers at the networks by providing C-Span-like video from Iraq to local TV stations (and, I hope, the Web).

: If you’re a gatekeeper, what should you do? Don’t fight it. Enable it. We’re in the information business. More information is good.

6 responses to “Death of the gatekeeper”

  1. Independant George Avatar
    Independant George

    Pickig nits – You’ve got the wrong permalink for the BoSox story. It’s supposed to be this one.

  2. Donnah Avatar
    Donnah

    They’re not going to want to give up the power.

  3. Edward Avatar
    Edward

    You can hear Schilling give the media a slap down here:
    http://www.bostondirtdogs.com/2003/schilling%20interview.mp3

  4. ed cone Avatar
    ed cone

    Sometimes the middleman adds value to the information chain. I don’t want the Pentagon and other centers of power to have complete control over the information they share, or how it is presented. Pentagon webcasts and weblogs and footage, great. Independent reportage and analysis, essential. Not mutally exclusive of course.

  5. hugh macleod Avatar
    hugh macleod

    When I worked at Raygun Magazine, we had this very simple formula:
    1. The Celebs give us access.
    2. In return, we give the celebs “credibility” (ooh! ah! edgy photos!)
    3. We give the readers a snapshot of an ideal they can aspire to.
    4. We give the advertisers an audience of aforemetnioned aspiring types.
    5. The advertisers give us money. So do the aspirers, just not as much.
    Access-credibilty-audience-aspirations-money. What a lovely mix.
    Why did the multimillionaire celebs allow us underpaid journo types access? Because they had a new movie to sell. Because we could present them in such a way that made them appear higher up the cultural foodchain than the normal mass media they were used to.
    Hmmm… I would have just preferred to have gone with a plain access-money formula, doing away with all the middlemen altogether, but we didn’t have a business model for that one.
    It was a total game. Blogs circumvent the game. People who make a living playing the game are not best pleased. Hence their snarky remarks.

  6. Sarah e.g. Avatar
    Sarah e.g.

    I read a lot of baseball message boards and newsgroups and we get people pretending to be players like David Wells and Bobby Ayala all the time. We never know when to take them seriously because baseball players tend to have even worse writing skills and baseball comprehension than the average fan (the erudite Schilling excepted, of course).
    (and Manny for Alex would have been a smart move for Texas, IMHO)

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