The Information Crisis (Part 1 )

There’s never been a time when information that is culturally accessible and makes people smarter rather than anger-without-purpose is more critical. There is a revolution going on.  Not the kind you may envision with anarchy on the streets,  but nonetheless we ARE in the midst of a media and cultural revolution.  The weak willed and traditionalists will be defeated by new visions.

The state of news and information makes the state of the music industry  look like child’s play. And there’s certainly a revolution there. I violently believe that “smart” can be mass appeal, but media and information is getting dumber in the USA at a time when much of world is getting smarter. There’s this BLURRING between news and pop culture. There’s this assumptions that smart can’t reach Middle America. News media is stuck somewhere between 1955 and YouTube stars and the result is a usually a form that is irrelevant and isolating to some, and unhealthy addictive mind candy to others. Social media is incredibly rich but a goldmine of misinformation adding to the misinformation overload that celebrates the wrong stuff.

There are solutions, but it ain’t gonna happen from old school journalists living in the Cronkite era or from pop culture pundits. There’s a NEW approach to news and information out there that hasn’t been presented yet. And man, it looks, sounds and smells NOTHING like the old way. A weird similarity is music in 68. You had AM Top 40 which was becoming irrelevant, then you had underground FM which was too elite for mass consumption…but then there were concepts that were in SYNC with the era and culture..and it worked. I see the same opportunity for news/information in 2020, and it won’t resemble “news” as we’ve ever seen it.  I’m talking TOTAL change,  not new graphics, simply a “digital presence” or yet another aggregation site,

Can’t really blame the big news organizations. Whether it’s Fox, CNN, BBC,  or whomever, they are in business and most are doing pretty well.. I’d imagine many of their own employees also wince at the state of dumbness. It’s the overall system of thinking that needs an overhaul. A Fox isn’t the place that’s going to change. These guys do what they do and are successful. It’s a crisis much BIGGER than any organization. It’s a disease that’s deeper. The optimist in me says that any disease is curable—and he or she who discovers the cure will make a deep and positive cultural difference…AND be financially viable .

Most people might like a Mc Donald’s every now and then, but News Media is living in a Happy Meal world. Feeding Junk Culture. I wonder if I’m just being elitist. Nah—I saw a few surveys that showed over 85% saying “enough already!” …yet the parade carries on. Just like Mc Donald’s, junk culture is OK…but leave it to the purveyors of it.  OBSESSION with the junk is a key problem.

It’s not about “serious news” just as it’s not about Junk Culture news…it’s about finding a new way to think it and deliver it. These new ideas will likely come from someone NOT in the news/information business. Someone with no news baggage who can change the paradigm. It’s actually what a lot it’s all about, New, radical and insanely different ways or “formats” that deliver information.

We are in such an incredibly powerful era of history and to see the amazing opportunities to inform and enlighten being lowered to cheap junk culture is disgusting and limiting   There is SO MUCH OPPORTUNITY to engage our country’s mainstream and news media/pop culture news and YouTube stars are delivering, with a few exceptions, shit. Rudderless shit….maybe popular shit,  but shit.  

Why does the 10pm local news look like the 10pm local news or why does a newspaper look like a newspaper? You have to put the obviously important short term Economics aside, because re-capturing America for the long term is more about radical re-thinking and getting in sync with the NEW mainstream—

Ain’t easy…but I believe it is do-able. But it ain’t gonna happen with obsessing over the quick sugar rush of a story that is nothing more than junk.

The revolution IS happening…and it IS being televised. And it Is exciting.

We’re where it all will happen. Music is timeless and wonderful, but Information is the new Rock & Roll that’s powering culture.  It’s more about your phone and screen ——EYE+EAR+ BRAIN