October 13, 2025
Do you think the rise of independent media is taking over from corporate media?
For instance, the news is increasingly going independent, providing a level of legitimacy to written independent media.
Back in the dark ages, when I was in high school, each week we had a front-page news quiz based on the local paper. It would be basic questions like, where is the hurricane predicted to hit? Or who is the president of Ghana? Just the news, no commentary. The local paper covered international, national, and local news. Just the news, no commentary, except on the editorial page. Of course, there was always Walter Cronkite, delivering the evening news.
When CNN first started as a news channel, it was the news. Twenty-four hours a day. Back then, it covered both national and international topics. I had it on all day, every day, as background noise as I went about my life.
But independent news was happening on a small scale. Community organizations passed out flyers on street corners. Nationwide, alternative groups produced magazines that were distributed by subscription and on newsstands.
Then, the internet happened.
It wasn’t an immediate change, but text-based channels spread different points of view from the mainstream companies. At first, they couldn’t be trusted, as much of what was posted was from unreliable sources. Then, the big companies started filling in the gaps, and we didn’t have to wait for the paper or the news on TV to get information. But the mistrust we’d developed for anything on the internet extended to the big companies.
The news today (at least in the US) is a mess. It’s all filtered through political leanings. No one source can be considered trustworthy. Not only do people need to research the topics they are interested in, they have to look into the reputation of the people posting it. So much of what can be found is no better than a bit of information that has been put through a game of telephone—rumor and innuendo. If it hasn’t been made up entirely.
Do I think that independent news is taking over from mainstream media?
Short answer – no. I believe we’re in a transition phase, trying to find a balancing point between the two. I’m unsure of what the current state of the news will morph into. At some point, I suspect the smaller sources will fall away, just like so many small newspapers have closed. And when was the last time an organization handed out a newsletter on the street corner? (Has social media taken over that function?)
There’s also new technology to consider in the equation. How will a site’s algorithms affect what news you see? When will someone create a tool to defeat them? And with AI creating news, not just reporting it, how can we be sure what we read is accurate?
Now, how does this translate to media in general? As far as music and movies go, there’s so much money involved that I don’t know how independents can break the barriers involved. As authors, we know how that works. Without the money to buy publicity, or the right connections, it feels like a battle we can’t win. Yet many of us keep trying.
How do the others on this hop feel? Find out by following the links below.
And, as always, until next time, please stay safe.
October 13, 2025
Do you think the rise of independent media is taking over from corporate media? For instance, the news is increasingly going independent, providing a level of legitimacy to written independent media.
It is very hard to get noticed as an indie writer…but it was also just about impossible to get published through the Big 5.
I think, barring major investment, the “mainstream” broadcast channel news will shrink as the alternative outfits become more robust. I think they’re both here to stay and I think other media will emerge as technology allows it.
The history of journalism in the United States is interesting and varied.
If you go back to the early days of the country, journalism was mostly just printers running flyers. Some of them were striving for accuracy, but most were just trying to sell newspapers.
Then a few newspapers got big and started to say they were the “real” news and their competitors were just “rags”. The New York Times deemed the New York Post unreliable, but that didn’t mean the NYP was actually less reliable than the NYT. It was all about competition. Same way with the Washington Post and the Washington Times. If you read both of these two competitors, you’d probably end up with most of the facts on any news. But some people insisted the bigger newspaper was more reliable just because the newspaper said they were.
And Walter Cronkite had that image of “just the facts”, but it wasn’t actually true, particularly in the last 10 years of his career. Apparently, David Brinkley argued with him over his biases during the Vietnam War. Brinkley felt Cronkite was slanting the news and Cronkite admitted he was and he didn’t think there was anything wrong with that.
And, personally, I don’t have a problem with that so long as the reporter says to the public, “This is my opinion.” That signals me to take what I learn from them and go fact-check it against their competitor. But I can’t abide reporters who say they’re unbiased and clearly are giving me their opinions and trying to pass that off as news.
I don’t believe there is any “pure” reporting. News can be slanted by including the facts but not all the facts. Or not reporting any of the facts. I had to learn about the recent storm in Alaska from a Facebook video.