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When President Obama took office in 2009, the American media was in free fall. In February of that year, theColumbia Journalism review estimated thatmore than 12,500 editorial newspaper jobshad been cut over two years, and papers across the country were folding or scaling back.

Journalism's business model implodedas readers and advertisers migrated online. Craigslist killed the classifieds, and the idea of"bundled" news available via a subscription became unnecessary, especially with the growth of social media as a place to share and find it. And the market crash didn't help.

It's a sign of the state of the media today that a numberof the interviews Obama has given this year have beenwith outlets that either didn't exist at all or didn't exist in their current formwhen he was inaugurated. There have been interviews withGrantland(est. 2011)andVox(est. 2014).BuzzFeed, with which he did an interview and a video, was founded in 2006 but didn't hire political reporters until 2012, and theYouTubestars who interviewed Obama all made their viral debuts since he's been president. Vice, the outlet that released an Obama interview in recent days, has been around longer than Obama's presidency, but is a far different (and better-funded) product these days than it was in the years after its 1990s founding.

The Internetlaid waste to newsrooms across America, but it eventually led to experiments injournalism forthe social age. Aided by money from venture capitalists, native ads and wealthy benefactors, some are actuallygrowing again.TweetDeck is the new Newswire, posting to your Facebook feed is the new paper route, and it's once again safe to encourage college students to study journalism (we hope).

Obama, the first president in this new media landscape, has adapted to it. The White House's press strategy is savvy and selective, and it gets the results it wants. TheVox interview felt like an ad, the BuzzFeed Motion Pictures video (separate from the interview with editor-in-chief Ben Smith)was an ad (for Obamacare), and the Grantland piece was written by Rembert Browne, who disclosed that hevolunteered for the Obamacampaign in 2008 and applied for a job for his 2012 campaign. Meanwhile, the Washington Post hasn't interviewed the president since 2009.

Obama's defenders would argue that this strategy reflectshisaversion to Washington and a desire to reach a young audience, but traditional media are none too impressed. TheColumbia Journalism Reviewsaid astudy of his interactions with the media"reveals a White House determined to conceal its workings from the press, and by extension, the public." In all of 2014, hegave only five solo press conferences. Five decades early, John F. Kennedygave as many as 23 per year. (Obama also gave 20 joint press conferences with foreign leaders and 24 short question-and-answer periods after he made a statement in 2014.) So much for the "most transparent administration in history."

Unlike JFK, though, Obama doesn't necessarily need newspapers, magazines, radio or television to get his message out. With social media, the White House can bypass the other outlets entirely. Thenight of his State of the Union address, rather than giving the pressadvance embargoed copies of his speech, the White Housepublished it onMedium(est. 2012).

And lest you think this practice won't live in with the next president, witness Hillary Clinton. The Democratic frontrunneralso chose to bypass the traditional media withher initialresponse to the controversy surrounding her use of a personal e-mail account while Secretary of State. Her first response was a 26-word tweet, indicating she wanted the State Department to release her e-mails.It was viewed by more than 3.3 million times, 2.3 million of which came from embeds, according to Twitter.

Her tweet was low-hanging fruit in the our new media age, easily embedded. Itwas a press release, and it was echoed widely. But it didn't really address the controversy at hand-- or mention that the State Department didn't have her e-mails to begin with, and as many as half of them were deleted without a third party deciding whether it should be public record.

Eventually, she had to go the traditional-media route. Standing in front of the press at the United Nations on Tuesday, she actually had to answer questions, and she left many unanswered.

Continue reading here:
The Fix: Do voters even need the media anyway?