This months issue of The Nation features a long piece about Al Gore and the launch of "Current". The article points the genisis of the network to Gore's initial interest in UnFiltered, which i think is partly true. Certainly there are a number of things happening in the world that drive media toward user-content, blogs, podcasts, vlogs, and such.
But what i think all of the media enterprises trying to link up to user-content seem to miss is that the things that are fueling user-created content are the same things that are undermining mainstream media.
Mass distribution is fundamentally unsatisfying to creators. Would you rather give a speech (or read a poem) in a stadium with a white-hot spotlight blinding you from seeing a crowd of 60,000 or in a place like New York's Town Hall - an intimate room of 350 who can respond, cheer, and even ask questions.
Big media isn't good media.
So Current, or Kyou (san fran), or Adam Curry on Sirus all need to tell content creators why they aren't just fine building their brand, and their own economic future on an internet distribution platform.
Maybe they don't need to be embraced by mass media to feel meaningful.
article | Posted April 28, 2005
Al Gore Gets Down
During a town hall meeting on MTV in 2000, Al Gore dismissed a question about the rapper Mos Def. Throughout his career, Gore viewed hip-hop music, even when practiced by a politically conscious artist like Mos Def, as an undignified form of political expression. "Gandhi once said you must become the change you wish to see in the world," Gore said of hip-hop. "I don't think it's good enough to say, 'Well, we're just reflecting a reality.'"
Can Current be serious and dignified and appealing and popular? "On air, you're faced with the tyranny of the mass media," says Steve Rosenbaum, creator of MTV's UNfiltered, the inspiration for Current's initial vision. "Which is: If you do three pieces--one on the environment in Alaska, one on homeless people in New York and one on teenage girls getting breast implants, guess which one will do better than the others? People, especially those who watch TV, tend to be attracted to less intelligent, coarser, less thoughtful programming."
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