New York Times reporter Jon Pareles takes a pretty condescending view of big-time names in New Media YouTube and MySpace. In a Sunday story, Pareles criticizes Google and News Corp. for buying the two online sharing sites calling them "a couple of empty vessels." Pareles denigrates MySpace to "an ever-expanding heap of personal ads, random photos, private blathering, demo recordings and camcorder video clips" not worth the $580 million it was bought for and YouTube "a flood of grainy TV excerpts, snarkily edited film clips, homemade video diaries, amateur music videos and shots of people singing along with their stereos" definitely not worth the $1.65 billion.
Not suprisingly, Pareles got slammed by the blogosphere for his point of view. Stacy Kramer wrote a post on paidContent.org "As he explores the cultural meaning, what Pareles skips over is that News Corp.and Google weren’t buying the content as much as the community, the massive traffic and the distribution MySpace.com and YouTube.com provide respectively. That, and the idea that sophisticated online advertising can overcome fragmentation. Of course, that’s our job, not his." I think she's right -- News Corp and Google now have one of the key demographics at their disposal, and that's definitely worth something.
Jeff Jarvis wrote on his media blog BuzzMachine that Pareles, more than anybody, should be celebrating the expanded freedom of expression allowed by these new mediums. "Choice is good, not something to be lamented. Indeed, I find it ironic that a critic, of all people, should be complaining about choice. Choice is precisely what necessitates criticism," he said. Furthermore, he points out that Pareles, being a Big Media hotshot at the New York Times, just doesn't get it. "Pareles makes the common mistake of bringing old-media, mass metrics to the new-media, niche world." From what I've seen, most professional journalists do not understand the value of niche media, but clearly there is since both of these sites are so popular.
While of course traditional journalists feel threatened by user-generated content because it makes their profession a simple pasttime for anyone interested, but Pareles should know better to slam Web users and two of the most important sites online today. Online journalism is the future and Pareles, who probably wants to keep his job at the times, should consider adapting and accepting New Media, in all its forms.
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