Experts can't let go of old mainstream media models

Ian Lamont — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:35:10 -0700

I like reading Howard Kurtz's "Media Notes" in the Washington Post, but today's column -- a profile of the Boston Herald and its struggles amid a changing competitive and demographic landscape -- was disappointing. Kurtz and Herald editor Kevin Convey are apparently unable to see beyond the Herald's decades-old rivalry with the Boston Globe. A major source of woe for the Herald, the free daily tabloids such as the Boston Metro, is MIA from the column. Blogs are only mentioned in a very general sense and there is nothing about local readers turning to the Web to get their news fixes -- there is no discussion of Universal Hub, the Boston-area blogs aggregator read by thousands every day, or Barstool Sports ("By the common man, for the common man"), which many die-hard Red Sox and Patriots fans visit for news, opinion, and discussion which they aren't getting elsewhere.

Another prominent ommission concerns the Web efforts of the Herald and the Globe. Both publications have powerful brands and websites that date back to the 1990s, but missed many early opportunities to establish their online sites as must-go destinations for Boston audiences and people from all over the world interested in local happenings. Instead, readers are treated to the jumbled BostonHerald.com website and its supposed rival, the Boston Globe's Boston.com, which still gates many areas of the site and refuses to let readers comment on articles.

In a way, Kurtz's column is not surprising. Editors and experts from the mainstream media world have a tough time letting go of the Way Things Used To Be, when each major urban "market" had just two or three daily newspapers and audiences happily lapped up the limited, dated, one-way flow of information from these sources. While these old rivalries rapidly fade into irrelevance, Kurtz, Convey, and many of their mainstream media colleagues scattered across the country still insist on describing their challenges according to 20th-century frameworks, instead of the 21st-century realities that now govern the news business.

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