Andrew Keen has written an interesting blog entitled “In Defence of Gatekeepers” defending the idea that newspapers should remain our “gatekeepers” to news rather than mere “curators” of what is revelant to us.
Personally I agree with Keen as I have problems with the notion of media sources becoming curators of relevant information. I fear the obsession with relevance means we'll only read articles that reinforce our existing prejudices and that it will create a social division as communities become ever more introspective. It will also take out a lot of the serendipitous fun of flicking through a paper we enjoy at the moment.
But I also see the move towards relevance is probably inevitable. Such fragmentation has already happened online and in TV over the past few years. This will probably need to be reflected by printed media too if newspapers and magazines aren't to die out.
In some respects you could draw an analogy with the decline of political parties over the past 30 years. Once, parties were broad churches that attracted a mass membership based on “identity politics” - if you were working class, you were Labour; if you were middle class, you were probably Tory.
But since the 1980s people have left political parties in droves, and voting turn out has declined too. Instead, we seem to prefer single issue groups like charities or “mass movement” causes such as Make Poverty History.
People can agree on a single issue. That simplicity is attractive. But parties need to have an opinion on every issue, however complex, and need to find messy compromises that assuage people from across the spectrum. That isn't so attractive.
Similarly, newspapers have attempted to appeal to as wide a base as possible. Readers who care about politics have to put up with celeb gossip, sports fans with pages of share prices, and so on.
Is it inevitable that newspapers will have to choose their niche and specialise? I hope not – after all, political parties have survived, even if their membership has reduced from its peak.
Comments