Erosion of Old Media

The rise of the "citizen media" has been the focus of much debate and speculation recently. The new article, Web of Influence, in Foreign Policy Magazine, describes the rise of decentralized media and highlights Berkman Fellow Rebecca MacKinnon's work to generate discussion and information exchange about North Korea, which rarely allows journalists inside its borders, through blogging at NKZone.com. Jeff Jarvis, a veteran of both "old" and "new" media, describes a similar phenomenon in an interview series about the Future of Digital Media. He points to the upheaval in today's news organizations and argues that citizens are becoming empowered. "Today they are challenging and changing media -- where bloggers now fact-check Dan Rather," he says, "but tomorrow they will challenge and change politics, government, marketing, and education as well." And a recent Gartner|G2 study predicted that by 2007, at least one "nationally branded, network quality TV program will rely on the web as its primary distribution channel." Join this discussion by attending the Berkman Center's December conference on politics in the Internet era, Votes, Bits & Bytes, in which several sessions will focus on blogs as sources of news and information.