“Why I’m Actually Pretty Psyched For the New Sarah Palin Channel”

Sarah Palin has
started a new subscription-only web channel that she says will
allow her audience to create a community and discuss the news with
“no need to please the powers that be.”

Good for her, I argue in a new Time.com
column:

Palin’s new project is the latest sign that we live in world of
gloriously fragmented media and culture that allows just about
anyone to express themselves more fully than at any time in human
history. That’s a great thing, even if it means trouble for
long-established media companies and empowers conspiracy ranters
such as Alex Jones.

Twenty years ago, just as the Internet was developing into a
mass medium that catered to individuals’ unique tastes and
interests in unprecedented ways, critics
were foolishly flipping out about “media consolidation”
and how a few companies such as AOL Time Warner would control all
our news and information (as if!). Now, they are more likely to
worry over the loss of a
common news culture and the seeming ability of people to
consume only self-confirming points of view. That may seem
plausible on the face of things, but it’s equally wrong….

Far from walling ourselves off in ideological gardens that tell
us just what we want to hear, “the majority of Americans across
generations now combine a mix of sources and technologies to get
their news each week” [according to a study by the American Press
Institute]. We go deep on stories that interest us, reading
multiple accounts from multiple places to get more
information—something that wasn’t possible back in the days of
three broadcast channels and one or two hometown newspapers.
Perhaps most interestingly, we apply a
sliding scale of credibility based on sources, with 43%
having high trust levels in reports from well-established news
organizations, 21% from “word of mouth” ones, and even less from
unsubstantiated social media sources.

So welcome to the 21st Century media world, Sarah Palin.
New voices and platforms are always welcome, but it’s a jungle out
here. You don’t have to “please the powers that be,” but you do
have to bring real value to your readers and viewers – and that’s
no walk in the park in the mediascape of endlessly fascinating and
proliferating choices.

Read the
whole thing.

More on Sarah Palin
at Reason.com.