Understanding the difference between diversity and market share

This barb from today's crikey subscriber newsletter continues a ridiculous misinterpretation of  media diversity: "So it's business as usual in Helen Coonan's brave new world of media diversity – and just look at these Roy Morgan figures on where Australians get their online news for confirmation".

This line has been pushed by Crikey in recent weeks and has been picked up on the ABC and other media outlets.

The problem with it is that it confuses share with diversity, as if Crikey or Yahoo or anyone else is only a real alternative if they get something approximating the site stats of a major media player.

Diversity is the existence of choice not a market where a range of players have a roughly equal market share. In fact, as has been discussed at length in many quarters, new media is characterised by a long tail. (see here, here , here, and here). The notion of a long tail makes sense in an environment where there are virtually no barriers to entry and exit. The point is that millions of people can now publish and find an audience. The size of that audience will depend on a lot of things but not the cost of production.

There are at least several hundred thousand bloggers in Australia today. We can expect this number to keep growing especially with the creation of new platforms like Telstra's Bigblog.

There are a number of excellent online journals (Online Opinion, New Matilda). There is an interesting New Matilda readership survey here. In addition, Australians can access news sources from around the world.

In the US, over a quarter of internet users read blogs and we can expect that Australian figures would be lower but growing strongly as well.

Surprisingly, on the day that Rupert Murdoch once again warned of the impact this revolution will have on traditional media, some Australian commentators again demonstrated their ignorance.

"It is difficult, indeed dangerous, to underestimate the huge changes this revolution will bring or the power of developing technologies to build and destroy — not just companies but whole countries," said Murdoch, in a speech for the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers.

PS. I contributed a piece on blogging and media diversity for this issue of the Walkley magazine:  Download media_diversity_and_blogging.doc

Comments

[Chui Tey]

Trevor,

there may be lots of diversity in where I can get opinions, but as far as news is concerned, blogs have a long way to go.

My take is that blogs are like analysis pieces, but without sufficient news coming out from sources, it's going to be hard to analyze properly.

[Trevor Cook]

Chui Tey - We're always going to rely on media for content, but increasingly we will also get our 'news' direct from the source. Most of the content of newspapers is generated by media releases, maybe we can just subscribe to the sites we are interested in and make our own judgments about the content of those releases.
I can see a not too distant future when our reliance on the media for finding out what's happening is greatly diminished.
This doesn't apply to investigative pieces of course and maybe that will be the real strength of MSM in the future

[Narelle Lim]

Trev

the question is: would I rather be informed by the New Yorker or by walking down Fifth Ave and asking everyone I pass for their opinion?

[Trevor Cook]

Narelle - I think the idea of a choice is a bit artificial. Why can't I read the New Yorker and hear what others have to say (when they want to say it as opposed to interrupting them). The world is full of publishers now not just a wealthy few. BTW Malcolm Gladwell is a blogger too now so maybe he doesn't see a conflict either