I recently filled out a questionnaire for Bloomberg News about my satisfaction with their website. I gave them a “low score”. I didn’t pay much attention to it because I get at least one request for a major survey a week, and one almost every day in a political fundraiser. I figured it would just go into a statistical calculation somewhere and no one would ever pay any attention to it. THIS TIME, it was different.
I got a personal email from Chris Wittman, Head of Customer Success at Bloomberg! He wanted more information. Because this level of “customer service” is so unusual, I reached back. As readers of my blog and website know, a primary incentive behind my 30+ years of research into the problems of society was to understand why communications among people, at ALL levels has broken down. Specifically, how could DIALOG in DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS have reached such a level of GRIDLOCK! How has society become so POLARIZED. I’ve actually made some major discoveries that explain why. I describe those discoveries in Collapse 2020 Vol. 1. Anyone in the media, government or the academic community that wants to dig deeper into what I’ve found, please contact me.
Here’s what I wrote to Chris:
Chris, This is a very unusual outreach! And very welcome. For 30+ years, I’ve been a researcher of the collapse of modern communications. After such great promise at its start, the internet has become a major media “train wreck”! This categorization also applies across the board: academics, government, personal relationships, and knowledge capture. I devote multiple chapters to this issue in my new books Collapse 2020 Vol. 1: Fall of the First Global Civilization, and Vol. 2: Birth of Personalized Democracy. I’d gladly send you complementary e-books. Just say so.
As for the task at hand, helping Bloomberg with Customer Success, here are the reasons I gave your format such low marks:
1. COST: I rejected Bloomberg at $40/mo. just as I rejected the Boston Globe, NYT, Washington Post,The Intercept, and The Guardian at those rates. To get a cross section of views, just you and these other 5 make daily news a $200/mo. cost. After free trials, the others agreed to stay at their trial rates indefinitely. I have 2 more months with Bloomberg. If Bloomberg also extended its trial rate, that would make it reasonable.
2. OVERLOAD: Beyond cost, the larger problem is MANAGING the flood of information about all of the stories a modern person wants to track in today’s COMPLEX society. Every journalist and media source: print, video, audio, and internet, are approaching news the same way it was done a hundred years ago: STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS! Every article is a stand-along presentation. And when an article tries to capture history, like they do at the Atlantic, for example, it is still a stand-along presentation. They are “on ramps” to a grid-locked highway! To deal with this, the entire industry of news reporting needs to change! It needs to look more like a library!
As an example, take a look at Rantt Media. They have presented a DAILY rundown of top stories about Trump since his first day. But these are not articles. They are pointers. Bloomberg also does this with its features like The Bloomberg Open. But Rantt is only a handful of people who specialize on a small topic. Their daily report ONLY has that focus. Also, however, it has an archive. To cover ALL the topics Bloomberg covers, you NEED to develop a much more STRUCTURED consumer ACCESS approach that is supported by an extensive ongoing ANALYSIS system that might be compared to the sections of an ENCYCLOPEDIA. I discuss this at length in an article titled A3 Structure Discussions.
In summary, Bloomberg’s “success” at covering such a wide range of issues has also become its “nightmare”. You have the resources to address the challenge. You just need a massive rethinking of the entire change society has made.
Collapse 2020 Vol. 1 book page Related books at A3 book page
