This will most likely be seen as the height of the media's power to influence people and events. At no time in history has mass communication media been as influential. It has opened doors forced closed by dictators. It has built people, institutions and companies up, and almost as quickly brought them down. It creates fifteen minutes of fame and infamy daily--many times over. The current power of the "Fifth Estate" is unprecedented. 

But what goes up must come down. And in its most glorious moment in history we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the media. 

As usual, it is the Internet that is changing things. In a “media world” the infrastructure to deliver information to the interested audiences is the printing press and mail/delivery distribution and broadcast transmission/receivers. Content is provided by public information specialists such as reporters, editors, writers, videographers, etc. 

In a “post-media world” the Internet is the infrastructure. Content is provided by, well, just about anybody who wants to produce content and who has the means to tell the world where the content can be found. In this world, the media as an intermediary or go-between are quickly becoming superfluous. Newsmakers become news packagers and news producers. The audience gets information directly from the creator of the news, not from a third party who packages it for consumption and who controls the means of distribution. 

The implications are profound. Here are a few changes we are likely to see in the future: 

• News producers will increase by thousands of times.
• New methods or “control gates” will be adopted that will help direct the interested audiences to the news stories.
• The audience will have and demand unprecedented control over the information.
• A new breed of “truth filters” will emerge. 

News sources and news producers. 

Right now there is a line drawn between being a source of public information and a producer or packager of public information. The line is certain to become blurry in the near future. 

Let’s say an industrial accident occurs. The people surrounding the accident and those responsible for the company involved are the sources of information. The news reporters are the packagers. They go to the sources, gather the information and material (high impact visual images) they need to make a compelling story and it is “packaged” for distribution to the interested public. This process assumes that the public uses the traditional print and broadcast distribution to gain the information. It changes as soon as people start using the internet to gain their information. 

In the Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crash, the company was prepared to implement a website for incident information. It is astounding that even though they were one of the earliest to use this form, nearly 1.2 million people visited their incident site in just 13 hours. How many would have visited if it had been more common knowledge that everything they wanted to know about the crash was available first on their website? 

Here is where the line gets blurry. Will the company with the industrial accident provide the barest of facts for use by the packagers? Or, will they become the packagers themselves? Right now there is a battle between reporters and public relations people in that reporters both want and resent when sources of information do their own packaging. They want it because it often saves them time and work when deadline are tight (such as B Roll footage and backgrounders almost ready to print), but they resent it and call it “spin” when it appears to them that they are trying to do the reporters job for them or are too obviously self-serving. This issue will be resolved when the sources of news decide they will package themselves in a way acceptable to the public and use the internet as the distribution point. 

Will this happen? It already is. And that is why the number of news producers or packagers will greatly increase. Except they will be working for the companies, agencies, elected officials, and non-profit organizations that are the common sources of news. 

The emergence of new control gates for information. 

In the “media world,” the media performed the function of control gate. Editors looked over all the events and activities going on and decided which of them was of interest to their audience. Then they selected, packaged and distributed in the order they thought of most interest. So we have on our nightly tv news show headline news, then major local news, then some less significant national or international news, then the weather, then sports, then lottery numbers. Very linear, very predictable and incredibly homogenous as you switch from channel to channel. 

In the “post media world” where the news sources also become the news packagers and the internet becomes the distribution point a new problem emerges. The audience has direct access to the news sources but now there are literally millions. As a television viewer or a newspaper reader I have very limited choices. A certain number of newspapers, magazines, TV news programs, radio stations, etc. But when the internet is used to distribute news directly, now there are potentially millions of sources and I become the control gate for myself. For major events such as an airline crash it may not be critical because I will find out about it through my portal or traditional media and can quickly go there. But how do I know about that butterfly flapping its wings in China that will really affect my future, or how do I know that a new technology was introduced in New Zealand that will change my business? 

There is a huge opportunity here for control gates that allow you to quickly drill down to those news sources and packagers in which you have the most direct interest. 

The audience will control. 

If there is anything the internet has done it is to reverse some power equations. We certainly have seen that in the investment community, but we have also seen that in terms of information. Those who controlled the information—both distribution and packaging—wielded tremendous power. That’s why any dictator looks quickly to how he or she can control the press. But, more so than ever before it is power to the people. 

Let’s look at it on a micro scale at a football game. Right now the game producers give us what we think we want. The camera angles, the tidbits on player’s lives, the statistics. But why? It’s linear, it’s controlled by the packager—it’s old media. In the very near future each viewer of the game will select his or her own camera angles, they will research their own relevant stats, they’ll peer into the personal lives of the players they want to visit. They will be able to control and once they are able they will demand it. 

The same with a news story. One viewer may be interested in the type of truck involved in the chemical spill and what its safety record has been. Another will be interested in the driver and whether he or she is related to anyone they know. And another will be most interested in the chemicals that spilled into the nearby stream and where that stream goes and how often spills like this have occurred in the past. In the “media world” packagers try to anticipate the questions, make decisions on what is relevant to the most people and discard or don’t pursue the rest. In the post-media world, stories will have far more depth and each audience member will determine what level of detail they want and what direction they want to pursue. Another reason why the number of news packagers will go way, way up. 

What if the news source, in this case the trucking company, decides they don’t want to provide that level of information. If there is sufficient interest, someone else will. And that means that they will lose their opportunity to be the news packager and will complain (as almost all companies do now) about the poor treatment they received at the hands of press. 

The new “Truth Filters.” 

What I am suggesting, of course, is that the long standing battle between news sources and the news media is coming to an end because the traditional news media is coming to an end. No longer will you hear cries of “I can’t believe how they butchered that story,” and “I didn’t say that!” The reason is that when the company or agency becomes the news packager or producer, they control the story. 

But into this PR person’s fantasy world a little reality must be injected. Will the audience trust the packager knowing it is coming from the news source and knowing they have a vested interest in the perceptions coming out of the story? The most obvious answer is “no,” the more realistic answer is, “it depends on the credibility of the source/packager.” 

The news media today perform a role which can be considered “truth filter.” They apparently have no axe to grind, no vested interest in the results of the story, no stock in the company under attack. They are independent, “third-party,” clean. As anyone who has observed the news industry in the last while knows, this “truth filter” role has been sacrificed on the altar of “infotainment” in which ratings and audience appeal are of much greater importance than true objective reporting. Still, to a large degree, the audience grants them this role and gives much more credence to the media than the source. 

What happens in a source/packager model as we are talking about in a post-media world. The issue will hang on credibility. If the source/packager is seen as credible and their information stands under scrutiny they will gain a reputation as a trusted source. If not, credibility will be lost and credibility, as they say, is a terrible thing to waste. 

No doubt, this post-media world will see the emergence of new “truth filters.” These will be people and organizations (web-based of course) who will perform the function of verifiers of truth coming from the source/packagers. Companies and agencies will face a choice: tell it like it is or turn over the role of truth teller to the truth filters. This is a hard choice for many companies now, especially as legal issues so often bear on public issues and legal protection generally takes precedence over reputation protection. But if it is hard now, it will be that much harder in the future. There will be little tolerance for “spin” in the post-media world. And recovering from false or tainted or misleading information will be extremely difficult. 

The real question facing the newsmakers of today is whether or not they will accept the challenge of becoming news packagers and distributors. The issue is not whether or not to use the internet. That choice has long been made and anyone involved in an issue of public concern is already very aware of how opponents to their perspective can use the internet to distribute information and perspectives contrary to their point of view. So the only question is whether you will play the game and how well it will be played. 

PIER System is a first generation "news packager/distributor." This system will evolve as will a great many options designed to help newsmakers form and distribute the news. Future information staffers and tools will allow company presidents, agency heads, elected officials, emergency responders to not only talk more effectively to the media, but become skilled "talking heads" themselves, interacting directly with an interested public. That day is far closer than most imagine. 

---------------------------------------

Gerald Baron is the president of Baron & Company and the creator of the PIER System. Baron & Company is a strategic communication firm located in Bellingham, Washington providing client counsel and strategic services on public information issues to clients in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. PIER, a Internet-based integrated communication management system, was designed out of significant crisis communication experience and helps companies and organizations to quickly prepare and disseminate public information.