Larry D. Lauer

TCU honors students and I have wrapped-up our explorations of “How Media Revolutions Change Everything”  with a second week of site visits in London.  This week it was the BBC, the British Film Institute (BFI), and the CBS London Bureau.

The visit to the BBC produced a surprise adventure into the world of archives.  We were asked to consider the challenge faced by those charged with archiving a new media world where far more information is generated than can be captured and stored.  Current BBC thinking is that while the “story” or lesson of a great work scholarship, literature, or other media might be digitized for posterity, the details of all these great achievements cannot. This contradictory idea of a significant loss of history in a “big data” world was shocking.

At the BFI we explored how media revolutions, politics and declining resources can combine to change the culture, identity, and founding mission of a unique and historic institution. The BFI was originally charged with the preservation of a distinctly British film industry, but somehow also became a custodian of a national British identity. But recent budget cuts and political influence, as well as the new media revolution, have caused many insiders to fear it is losing its’ uniqueness, and thereby its’ national prominence. Again, we were surprised by discovering still another way media revolutions can change everything… including the stature of long established institutions.

The CBS London bureau functions as a hub from which foreign correspondents travel to cover the world. Digital technology and social media have change every aspect of news reporting, with smaller cameras, instant satellite transmission, GPS mapping, mobile phone connections, and even citizen-produced i-phone contributed photos. Here too, however, budget cuts have closed bureaus, eliminated staff, and reduced the number of events that can be reported. Reporters therefore tend to “herd” to the same stories. Our take-a-way was that while CBS correspondents are the best in the business, it’s also important for the consumer to know what stories go unreported. And what is even more compelling is the number of people who are now getting all their news from alternative, mostly unedited, and often inaccurate, new and social media sources.

The students and I have had an exciting adventure in media ideas over the last 10 weeks. We began by “Skype-ing”  in experts to our classroom on campus in Texas, and concluded by meeting face-to-face with experts in London. We ended where we began: Media revolutions indeed do change everything. And what’s more, even if we wanted to there is very little we can do about it!