Metaversal Mining

Are we seeing journalism and politics undergoing, what amounts to the same issue – changing models of accountability to their funders ?

Journalism, for the most part, has been funded by the sale of advertising space accompanying the content. As advertisers move their business to the internet, the drop in revenues has brought the newspaper industry to its knees in the US. In other words advertisers are no longer confident that they will benefit from funding journalism.

Is there a parallel in the crisis in UK politics ? The customers (voters) have lost confidence that Parliament will provide the government that they pay for. Putting it in cruelly economic terms – the meta-activity of politics is supported by the real activity of government, just as the meta-activity of journalism is supported by the real activity of advertising. The difference being that there is no current alternative to Parliament, where advertisers can readily jump ship to a ‘better’ ie cheaper solution.

We could argue about cause and effect, since the internet came before the crash in advertising revenues, whereas the crisis of confidence in British politics has gathered pace, arguably, as a result of several exogenous factors. But where journalism is struggling to find a new paradigm, British politicians are still in the throws of a fit of peek at the collapse of their glamour of invulnerability. The endless talk of parliamentary reform over the last few decades has not borne fruit. The scary thing about that is that now that ‘The Crunch’ is upon us, bad ideas hove into view. Parliamentary reform should not be crisis management.

Politics is useful. Journalism is useful. The models of accountability to their respective funders are both changing.