Two things struck me this weekend:

1) Evidently, enough people care about the Grammys that it is a major media event. Bigger, it appears, than the untimely death of our friend Anna Nicole! Now, that coverage was dispiriting enough, but at least it had DRAMA and, I don't know, an actual narrative? The grammys? Not so much. (Unless, of course, you've been hanging on to your hatred of the Dixie Chicks--and I do mean for reasons besides that THEY ARE VERY BORING.)

2) The NYTimes has a very interesting, yet very sparsely sourced article about the University of Phoenix which finally--FINALLY--says "Hmm... maybe an online degree isn't exactly the same thing as a degree that you do in person! Maybe especially if it's like, you know, done in half the time?" They link to a site called Ripoff Report which, as far as I can tell, is itself a ripoff, complete with multiple irritating popups and BLINK tags. Hooray, New York Times! You just noticed that 1) there are web sites where people complain about things and 2) hmmm, maybe there's a whole issue with this online degree thing we hadn't thought of in that flood of ad dollars coming out of UofP and Walden! Really, you think so? You GO, grey lady!!

So you want to know what these two things have in common? Sheer, flat out ignorance. Ignorance of what people care about, what they're up to, what they want. It's classic old media thinking: "We tell THEM what to care about!!" Like the fictional T. Herman Zweibel of "The Onion" fame (or, for, that matter, his real life(ish) inspiration, the media continues to jealously guard its supposed privileged position in the cultural consciousness, refusing to believe that the world has moved on and no one cares.

Look, no one cared about the grammys twenty years ago either, except maybe me, because I was really sad that Michael Jackson beat Stevie Wonder and Stevie was, like, blind! Wearing one glove was CLEARLY not enough to overcome major disabilities, but there it was. Furthermore, I had hoped against hope that this whole online degree thing might be a flash in the pan, but as time went on, everyone took it really seriously, as though an MBA from UofP might somehow, some way be equivalent to showing up to a class every single dang week, facing your instructor, handing in your assignments, whatever! But it appears I have been wrong about all of it! Either I am truly not participating in the culture I was raised in, or else (as I suspect) some form of mass media is being shoved down our throats, and most of us no longer believe in it at all.

The only evidence I have for the latter assumption is that I cannot find a single person who listens to Top 40 radio, and that I've never met anyone who thinks that for-profit universities are a good idea. Perhaps this is the rarefied atmosphere in which I live, but I doubt it--I'm hardly the cultural elite. The fact that what I see as headlines in the paper relates so little to what my peers are talking about would once have been a source of great consternation; now, with fragmentation a documented reality, I think it's the way most people feel. And the fact that old media organizations keep spewing the same tired stories doesn't change a thing.

Labels: Old Media Deathwatch