Darwinian Journalism

The book that changed the world….

Journalism is a living species.

And like any living species, it feeds.  So long as it can feed, it survives.

Journalism’s food is audience – readers or viewers.

The pond was once a quiet place, filled with an abundance of food. The feeders were big, lumbering and required a lot to eat to maintain their bulk.

Then, a much smaller, much faster species appeared.  Darting about the pond, it scooped up readers and viewers. And being so much smaller, it did not require so much to thrive.  And it reproduced with blinding numbers.

Soon the food supply began to run out.

150 years ago today, Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species went on sale in London.

The book, written for the layman, became an instant best seller, and an instant and persistent lightning rod for controversy.

Darwin’s theory of natural selection soon far transcended biology.  Depending upon where you were in the economic and social pecking order, it was either vilified or embraced.  In Britain, it was embraced. The British Empire was then at its zenith.  The small island ruled one-quarter of the planet.  It was the largest and most powerful empire in history.  Clearly, the Victorians could see, by sheer Darwinian natural selection, The British People had risen to rule the world because clearly, due to natural selection, they were obviously superior.

Darwin’s theory was quickly and deeply misinterpreted.  There was no final stage of evolution. Evolution was not headed anywhere. It did not have an end point.  It was, in fact, impossible to predict where evolution would lead a species. It was more  function of the circumstances that the species encountered.  The best indicator for survival, Darwin wrote, was the ability to adapt to change.

Close to the end of the 20th Century, there were massive powers in the world of journalism.  Empires of their own.  The Powers That Be written David Halberstam in 1979 catalogued and profiled CBS News, The New York Times and The Washington Post.  These were massive journalistic empires.  They generated fortunes for their owners and what they said ruled the world.  They were the British Empire of journalism.

What changed was not that the powers of journalism changed. On the contrary. What changed was their environment.  Journalism was evolving.

The rise of the Internet, of universal access, of cheap content creation all altered the environment of journalism at the beginning of the 21st Century.  The former powers were faced with the need to adapt quickly to change.

Can they do it?

Personally, I don’t think so.  I don’t think it is in their DNA.  I don’t think that they will be able to make the very deep and radical changes that will be necessary to evolve into a creature that can not only survive but thrive in the swamp of the Digital World.

Does this mean that journalism is dead?

No. Far from it.

Does it mean that old institutions like The New York Times or The Washington Post or CBS News are dead?

Most likely.

The British Empire which ruled the world for more than 200 years disappeared almost overnight. England did not slip beneath the waves, but she is a very pale shadow of her former self.  If you go to London and walk down The Mall, you can look up and see engraved marble with the names South Africa, East Africa, India… These are the fossilized remains of a creature that had its moment in the sweep of evolution and then was passed by.

I often feel the same way when I walk down 8th Avenue and look up and see the sign The New York Times on the front of their building.

Happy Anniversary, Charles Darwin.