The Them Me Us
(With apologies to Plato for the title)
There is them media, corporate mainstream media, you know… THEM. And there is We Media, Blogs written by you and me, individuals. And then there is Us Media, associations, non-profits, and advocacy groups providing investigative news to millions of members.
Michael Massing’s critique of mainstream media (MSM) in the New York Review of Books (The Press: The Enemy Within ) raises serious concerns about the ability of the MSM to provide quality investigative journalism. And while the rise of the Blogosphere and other We Media sources has filled in some of the gap, the individuals writing these pieces cannot truly fill it because they lack the support of institutional resources (money, staff, access to newsmakers, etc.).
Enter Us Media. Us Media includes the newsletters, magazines, and email alerts published by associations, non-profits, and advocacy groups. I call it Us Media because these organizations represent collectives of members with shared interests and stakes. They join these organizations, in part, to keep informed on issues affecting them. Industry trade organizations provide their members with inside information on political and policy developments affecting their industry. Advocacy groups do the same for citizen members interested in the specific issues being championed by the group. And while each of these organizations publishes articles with a distinct bias and perspective, there are invariably organizations on the other side of each issue publishing counter points and insights.
Collectively, these Us Media organizations fill the gap abdicated by the MSM and beyond the practical reach of We Media. A quick look at the client lists of the primary software vendors supporting these organizations reveals that tens of millions of Americans rely on associations, non-profits, and advocacy groups to keep informed on the issues facing the nation. Advocacy software vendors like Democracy In Action, Capitol Advantage, and Get Active, as well as association/non-profit enterprise platform vendors like CitySoft, Convio, and Kintera have millions of citizens in their collective client contact databases. Democracy In Action, the newest of the three advocacy software vendors, has 8.5 million contact records on its servers for its 200-plus client organizations. Get Active serves another 750 organizations, with more than 10 million contact records. And Capitol Advantage has around 1,500 client organizations, including some of the largest organizations in the country. Meanwhile, Kintera boasts thousands of client accounts. Convio announced that they added 16 million contacts to their databases in 2005 and sent out 300 million emails to client members (twice as many as the year before). And CitySoft has hundreds of client organizations to add to the mix. On top of these vendors, new, open-source vendors like Civic Space and Echo Ditto have recently thrown their hats into the ring and are providing alternative solutions for distributing news to members of advocacy organizations.
While nailing down the exact number of citizens receiving news from these organizations is difficult, especially since there is undoubtedly overlapping membership across the spectrum, it appears that at least 50 million, and possibly closer to 100 million Americans are getting news and information from Us Media sources. So if you want to see what Us Media is publishing, go to your favorite association, non-profit, or advocacy group website and subscribe to their email alerts and e-newsletters and start reading.