Jeff Jarvis, theorist or something, was one of the most gleeful of public figures in celebrating the demise of traditional media. Having made his bones in the business, he wanted the new tools to feast on the flesh of print publications and network TV, believing there would emerge a democratic revolution. In ways he couldn’t anticipate, he was correct.

Jarvis grew apoplectic as a Trump Presidency seemed increasingly possible, spending great personal time volunteering for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania and making desperate appeals to traditional media personalities like Howard Stern, hoping, belatedly, that the new abnormal could somehow be tamed by phone banks and talk radio. Not possible. The ethical standards and common decency that had washed away easier than ink helped make sure of that. What seemed an evolution to him turned out to be a devolution. 

From “Meet the New Gatekeeper, Worse Than the Old Gatekeeper,” Nicholas Carr’s astute Rough Type post:

We celebrated our emancipation from filters, and we praised the democratization brought about by “new media.” The “people formerly known as the audience” had taken charge, proclaimed one herald of the new order, as he wagged his finger at the disempowered journalistic elites. “You were once (exclusively) the editors of the news, choosing what ran on the front page. Now we can edit the news, and our choices send items to our own front pages.”

“The means of media are now in the hands of the people,” declared another triumphalist:

So now anyone can control, create, market, distribute, find, and interact with anything they want. The barrier to entry to media is demolished. Media, always a one-way pipe, now becomes an open pool. . . . Whenever citizens can exercise control, they will. Today they are challenging and changing media — where bloggers now fact-check Dan Rather’s ass — but tomorrow they will challenge and change politics, government, marketing, and education as well. This isn’t just a media revolution, though that’s where we are seeing the impact first. This is a chain-reaction of revolutions. It has just begun.

And the pundits were right — the old media filters dissolved, and “we” took control — though the great disruption has not played out in quite the way they anticipated.•