Tony Blair Concedes the Importance of Consumer Generated Media

Tony Blair, soon to be former Prime Minister of Britain, gave a speech yesterday where he talking about the impact of blogs and other consumer generated media on the media and political landscape. Here are a couple of quotes from his speech:

“Newspapers fight for a share of a shrinking market. Many are now read on-line, not the next day. Internet advertising has overtaken newspaper ads. There are roughly 70 million blogs in existence, so I’m told, with around 120,000 being created every day. In particular, younger people will, less and less, get their news from traditional outlets.”

This one is really great:

“The reality is that as a result of the changing context in which 21st Century communications operates, the media are facing a hugely more intense form of competition than anything they have ever experienced before. They are not actually the masters of this change, they’re in many ways the victims.”

What is quite sinister is the incredibly slanted report of the speech that has ended up in the media. All they have done is focus on one particular phrase which is “feral media“. They completely cut out all the comments about them being irrelevant. Basically they proved his point, which is that they are entirely focused on sensationalism rather than reporting facts.

When a world leader of a major economic power is talking about the importance of consumer generated media, it is time to take notice, if you haven’t already.