Can we get more media variety in 2011?
We either get too much of the same thing, too little of the formerly hot thing or not enough of the real thing.Consider too much of the same thing: last year the media focused incessantly (and often aggravatingly) on BP’s oil spill and its blackened brand, Toyota’s troubles, Facebook’s face, Gap’s new logo, Android’s surge and iPad’s popularity. And let us not forget Foursquare, GM’s resurgence, Nestle’s blunders, Jet Blue’s whacko attendant, Twitter’s apparent omnipresence and technology’s journey to the cloud.
But this isn’t anything new; beating a story to death personifies today’s media.
More curious are the occasions when the hottest story goes glacial. Not because the story ended, but because media interest waned. Case in point: the Haiti earthquake. The story dominated TV, online news and mainstream pubs for three months. But then coverage virtually stopped. Sean Penn called the media on it.
A similar thing happened with the BP oil debacle. Yes the oil had stopped flowing, but like the Haiti earthquake, life-altering ramifications continued to unfold including more affected shoreline, oil tenaciously clinging to marsh grass and people disagreeing with the FDA that it’s now safe to eat Gulf seafood.
Finally, and most inexplicable, we have the third story type affecting the media blend: not enough of the real thing. Consider this mere handful among hundreds of underreported stories:
While we heard all year that Twitter was everywhere and a major social force, a December 2010 Pew study about Twitter gave us fresh perspective, saying only 8% of American adults using the Internet use Twitter. This equates to only 2% usage on a typical day. Nearly half hardly ever read a word of the endless Tweets being Tweeted. You wouldn’t know that from all the buzz. - Who knew that defrauding health care companies has now become the hottest thing since Medicare fraud? $2.5 billion was collected in the past year alone. It’s only going to get worse.
- Last week, Amazon announced the Kindle 3 became its best-selling item of all time. Interesting news considering iPad’s media mania.
- More than 30 states are extracting natural gas from shale rocks, fueling a new “gas rush” as we seek to diminish our reliance on foreign oil. But critics are saying the EPA is underestimating the impact this is having on our drinking water.
- Fiber optic cable was positioned as a be-all-end-all solution, but last year companies holding dark-fiber inventory (fiber not being used) took portions off the market to push prices up. Prices have doubled in the last 12 months as the inventory shrinks while more computing goes to the cloud. Is our Internet future in danger?
- Good news! Did you know people gave more money in 2010, despite a troubling economy?
- Did we hear enough about the anti-regulators who “permitted the Great Recession” who were left in charge, or even promoted?
- Even though the banks repaid TARP funds, this doesn’t mean they are healthy. “Their asset values are often grossly inflated, which means their net worth is grossly inflated.”
Getting more story richness and balance in 2011 is arguably a naïve request. But can you imagine a media climate where we heard less of what we’re tired of hearing and more of what we don’t know? Bring it on, we have the time, interest and ability to deal with more variety, not less.
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