As media evolves, what defines and how important is trust? What role does an editorial viewpoint play in building a relationship with a customer? The NYT, following a trend established in Britain, has become more of a viewpoint newspaper as opposed to the newspaper of record. The result is it is probably more trusted by some but certainly less trusted by conservatives. The strategy is to shift the brand to an editorial viewpoint that connects with readers since its news is often dated and commoditized. There is much suggested about curated content but does this work at scale unless the curation is done by crowds or computers? I bet Wikipedia is broadly trusted. Google is probably trusted more than it deserves. But I bet the China withdrawal if it really happens will enhance Google’s long-term global brand. Won’t whatever succeeds Google in China be the search engine that “assembles all the world’s information… to be censored by the Chinese government?” And Google will be the search engine you can trust.
Trust
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Been a while. Hope all is well in Louisville.
I wanted to add that there are groups on facebook along the lines of “Wikipedia was the reason I got through Columbia Medical School.” While (hopefully) mostly sarcastic, there is still a strong thread of truth in these statements. Errors can appear in wiki articles, but the majority of well-trafficked information is correct. I have encountered errors myself but neglected to take the time to correct them fully, which is troublesome insofar as one needs to find citations (which can again be of questionable quality). The shift of information from trusted, vetted sources such as Britannica to a decentralised, “crowd-sourced” format has led to a few obvious consequences.
First, trust becomes crucial because of the possibility of misrepresentation. Second, awareness of and education about trust and security needs to improve. No matter how many times security experts circulate messages about proper protocol, non-savvy users will continue to neglect security and trust measures.
Finally, a tertiary effect is exemplified by the financial crisis coverage of recent years and emerged precisely because of media sources’ shifting their coverage toward certain viewpoints. The public not directly exposed to the guts of the crisis came away, and I believe still continues to hold, an incomplete and distorted view of the events of the meltdown, usually oversimplified.
Supporters of this decentralisation initially argued that ever increasing amounts of media coverage would allow a clearer picture to emerge from complicated events, as multiple viewpoints could be considered and facts checked (“curated”). However, the morass of media also has the potential to obfuscate issues precisely because of the amount of trust we have put into these vehicles.