When I first started iHollywood Forum with my wife six years ago, my Uncle Irv from Castro Valley was skeptical about the idea of public conversations about digitized Hollywood content.

“Hollywood just makes crap for TV and movies,” he groused, showing a proper Bay Area disdain for all things L.A. “What’s there to talk about?”

“We’re not really talking about what’s in the programming,” I protested. “We’re talking about the new technologies for distributing and monetizing it: the Internet, cellphones and so forth.”

Technology, after all, makes Silicon Valley run, so Irv was satisfied. And so was I, going on to produce dozens of seminars and conferences about distributing and monetizing content.

But, coming off a 10-day meditation retreat, I find the content issue niggling at me. Here we have all this media consolidation happening: with News Corp (Charts, Fortune 500) bidding $5 billion for Dow Jones (Charts); Thomson chasing Reuters in a possible $17.5 billion merger; and Clear Channel Communications, Cablevision and Tribune in private equity firms’ crosshairs. These guys all want to put exabytes of TV shows, movies, games, newspapers, video footage, newspapers and other content on the Web, cellphones, XBoxes, home networks, portable DVRs, and every other imaginable platform and monetize it every conceivable way.

The problem is that the vast majority of the stuff is junk. At the risk of alienating my core audience (and my kids): most of the material on TV is mindless; most movies are designed to maximize studio cash flow, not enlighten audiences;  most cellphone games are inane (bowling, anyone?); most news outlets toady to their readers’ basest leanings — to say nothing of gambling, sex and more dangerous “content” accompanying it all.

If this content is king, let me out of the kingdom.

Admittedly, there’s plenty of great content out there, too. I love what’s happening with music, although — ironically, from the column’s standpoint — it’s being monetized the worst. There’s news on the Internet from great outlets like the Wall Street Journal (at least until you-know-who buys it), the New York Times and Reuters. And some TV shows, chat rooms, games (the massively social networking kind), virtual worlds,  movies and other content deserve to be on as many platforms as possible.

But if this is all about catering, as we do today, to the lowest common denominator to maximize cash flow on as many platforms as possible, what are we creating? What does constant exposure to junk and worse do to the minds of our children and our communities? What legacy are we leaving the world? Do we really aspire to make lots of money and nothing more of our lives?

For years, I’ve dreamed about doing a conference exploring these issues. The problem is, no one would come. There’s no money to be made.

See Also

• The return of media merger madness
• My recent musings about media

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As a young reporter, I was slipped a copy of the Wall Street Journal’s stylebook by a friend and former Journal employee.  I spent weeks studying how to build their famous "A-head" articles (those daffy articles in the middle of the front page), ledes for stories (yes, it is spelled that way), nut graphs and, most important, its rules for attribution and fairness.

If Rupert Murdoch succeeds in his bid for the Wall Street Journal, the Journal as we know it could disappear. In its place, we may find the biggest blogging platform ever launched for one man’s right-wing views.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m liberal. (Don’t get me started on Iraq). And yes, this blog is biased. But I’m not telling you it’s news. It’s commentary.

Fox News is supposedly news. But anyone who’s spent any significant time watching it knows it has a significant right-wing bias.

Puh-lease don’t talk to me about the liberal media bias. Let’s say it exists. But any self-respecting newspaper or news source doesn’t present opinion as fact, doesn’t leave out the other point of view, doesn’t launch diatribes in the middle of a news program.

Those are all offenses I’ve seen committed on Fox News in the happily few times I’ve viewed it. I’ve only in the rarest instances seen blatant disregard for commonly accepted journalistic practices in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, which I read every day (Plagiarism aside, of course. That’s not as important, right? Just kidding).

Pardon me? You say the Wall Street Journal is well-known for its conservative views? Well, yes. The Journal’s editorials are somewhere to the right of the late Barry Goldwater. In fact, when you Google "Rupert Murdoch Wall Street Journal”, one of the first things you come up with is a 2004 article by Murdoch in the Wall Street Journal praising our dear President.

But Murdoch’s article appeared in the Opinion section, where it belongs.  Until now, the Wall Street Journal has  known the difference between opinion pieces (those are blogs on paper, youngsters) and objective reporting.

I’m not sure Murdoch does.

See Also

• Murdoch’s 2004 Wall Street Journal opinion piece
• Rupert Murdoch Built Global Media Empire with Bold Moves
• My recent blogs about media

Posted under Uncategorized