T-Rex is back!
The only thing I can remember about Intro to Journalism right off the bat is that Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message." What happens to the message if the medium is as extinct as a tyrannosaurus rex?
Not much.
Instead of being wiped out in the Ice Age, the message can and will live on, just not on the mainstream media. Just look at these numbers from Nielson Media Research and see how much the Internet has hindered television ratings. And that was in 1999. The Internet was very popular then, but the mainstream media really didn't find a place online until a few years ago. Think about how much it has improved since then. Think about how much time it has taken people away from the television. Think about how much more of an impact it can have in the future.
The time when media will move to another age is approaching. Even Rupert Murdock, the modern-day William Randolph Hearst, said the Internet means the end for media barons. He said a new generation of media consumers has taken the gate-keeping power from the proprietors of previous years. That new generation will change the media world forever because it has something traditional media do not: time and space. That mean's any citizen can be a journalist.
OhmyNews is the leader of the pack. It started with 727 citizen reporters and four staff reporters. In 2004, it had more than 30,000 and 35, respectively. OhmyNews is evolving as the dominant T-Rex of today, as it's taking entire nations by storm, starting with Korea.
Many frameworks for studying 20th century media exist, but the Cultural Studies/Cultural History Theory may be the most appropriate because 20th century media is in fact history. The main element of this theory is that media does not own culture.
The people do. And soon they will be the proprietors of deciding what they want to see. They will be the T-Rexes of a new age.
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