The Media Market

Eric Slater got canned from LA Times (read his open letter here) after his story turned out to be suspiciously similar to something Jason Blair would have made up. That is not to say that Slater is a new Blair, only that the stakes of MSM have been raised. LA Observer has a few thoughts on it. So too has Howard Kurtz at WP. Kurtz is as always analytical, and his sound reasonings reflect a time where in fact a critical mass of bloggers seem to establish a crowding-out effect on the market for information. And the mainstream media can't retaliate as they are losing their core market idea - the oligopoly on information distribution. That is why Slater was fired. And that has nothing to do with him being a sloppy journalist compared to his predecessors twenty years ago, as Kurtz so eloquently tells us. It's just that the standards of journalism have been rising - news consumers are less likely to take any information as valid without firmly established proof - and with that comes individual responsibility for journalists.

It's a good day for democracy. It's market efficiency at it's best.