Decline of the Talking Heads (Pundit Pinball)

The NY Times took a look at how things have changed regarding mainstream media talking heads, or news pundits, within the context of the recent Obama speech on the Gulf oil crisis.

Although it seems that both the left and right-leaning commentators alike were not impressed with the speech, writer Adam Nagourney asks the provocative question:

Does it really matter if you lose the pundits anymore?

There was a time when the after-action takes of big commentators were sought out by Americans trying to assess the latest news coming out of the capital. They helped drive public opinion.

But tracking influences on public opinion has become greatly complicated now that the once-exclusive club has been joined by the vast multitudes blogging or posting Twitter updates or otherwise opining online, with a select few doing so after offering instant analysis on television. Mr. Obama had barely begun his speech when various commentators began a running review on Twitter.

It is not just the number of commentators or the abundance of platforms that is diluting the influence of the mainstream media, but their speed. Opinions are being served up so fast that in this case many of them were stale by the next morning.

There is no denying that the punditry still has some impact – their opinions get recycled and repeated endlessly.  Indeed, their near universal agreement on Obama’s speech became part of the evolving story line.

But it is pretty clear that we are becoming a nation of pundits and news publishers.  Every time you share a link on Twitter, Facebook or in a blog post you are publishing news.  Add some analysis, and voila!  You too can become a talking head.

This levels the playing field when it comes to influence.   It can also make news more closely resemble hit-driven arenas like movies and music, because instead of information being driven from top down, like the waterfall that it used to be, information ricochets, clusters, ebbs, flows and sometimes gushes when enough people jump on board.

See my related post Welcome to the New, User-generated Nonstop Media Whipsaw.