Early last week the Project for Excellence in Journalism released its annual “The State of The News Media” report.

Part of the Project’s exhaustive overview focuses on online media and citizen journalism. Yes, broadband penetration is up, more of us get our news online and the number of blogs is doubling every 320 days. But, despite that diversity and increased audience, here’s the kicker, according to the Project’s report:

“Online… the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience, than in the legacy media.”

Just let that sink in for a minute. The Web, which was supposed to provide a global soapbox to a diversity of small voices, is (when it comes to news) still dominated by Yahoo! News, MSNBC, CNN, AOL News, the New York Times and the other mainstream news creators and aggregators.

Bloggers are more often focused on social or technical topics and, according to the report, run their blogs and websites in the same command-and-control ways many mainstream media sites do, not allowing audience members to post or comment, for example. And few have found a viable economic model for their online content. Even mainstream media sites are having trouble with finances, as advertisers (and newspapers’ advertising managers) aren’t migrating to the Web as quickly as newsrooms are shuffling content there.

So, what are we to make of all that? Why hasn’t blogging, citizen journalism and, last but not least, the online message of activists and the progressive left made more inroads into the hearts and minds of the average online news junkie?

Part of the answer is that newsgathering, real, on-the-ground, shoe-leather-thinning and phone-ear-callous-making newsgathering takes time, money, resources and experience. And, these days, those costs and a lack of revenue are killing the business.Folks gravitate to mainstream coverage often because that’s where a lot of stories start – for good or ill. Often, that hard work is under appreciated.

Here’s an example: on Twitter, a little after 3 p.m. on January 22, news spread like wildfire that Heath Ledger had died. Many radio and television stations didn’t announce the story until the 4 p.m. news slot. Later that day that prompted the popular vidblogger Sarah Meyers to write, “Often news first breaks on twitter.”

Well, in the case of Ledger’s death, that’s just plain wrong. The news was spread on Twitter, and quickly, but it was broken by a New York journalist getting an email, making a call or maybe even checking the police blotter for incident reports. Real facts about his death were gathered through legwork, interviews and research, not by thousands of people sending “OMFG, Heath Ledger is dead?” messages to one another.

There’s an old newspaper adage: “All news is local first”. If you have the reach and resources to turn diverse local news global quickly, people pay attention. So, the fact that the giants of mainstream media get the lion’s share of online news interest shouldn’t be that surprising. News costs money. And, bloggers, who often don’t focus on hard news content, aren’t yet seen as viable alternative news sources. In fact, according to the Project’s report, blogs were the lowest on the list of important sources of news. More Americans ranked getting news from friends and neighbours over blogs.

But, what about larger online media alternatives like Democracy Now! With its foundation and viewer funding, it has the resources to do original stories, and does so. But it often suffers from an overarching earnestness and anti-glamour that, I think, often keeps it from centre stage. It also does what many progressive left organizations (rabble.ca included) do with such magnificent full-throatedness: it preaches to the choir.

Here’s an example: I recently helped cover the World Against War rally for rabbletv (see the babble discussion here). We broadcast the event live. What did we show? A series of endless, earnest, sometimes angry speeches and polemicsdelivered to a crowd of often strangely-dressed individuals – all of which would, frankly, alienate most viewers. I mean, God love them for coming out and voicing a heart-felt (and I think correct) attitude to war. But, really, would your average viewer find solace, solidarity or feeling of common ground listening to insider-only call-and-response crowd-whipping and earnest, often angry, diatribes? I think not.

Unfortunately, online, that’s the face the progressive left puts forward. We look like a fractured, fractious gang that doesn’t know how to put a polite, engaging public patina on a tough message. There are, of course, exceptions.

The VC funded Huffington Post blends cultural, political and celebrity news in a digestible package. The folks at Brave New Films mix humour and message well and Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff is great fun. Here in Canada, The Campaign for a Democratic Media knows how to inject some fun in their work and Good Company Communications rocks at it.

But, they’re the few exceptions. Mostly, I think, we deserve the lack of attention we get online, because we often write and act like we don’t want an audience except for the people who know how to respond when we shout into a crowd. And, frankly, a lot of them dress funny.

wayne

Wayne MacPhail

Wayne MacPhail has been a print and online journalist for 25 years. He was the managing editor of Hamilton Magazine and was a reporter and editor at The Hamilton Spectator until he founded Southam InfoLab,...