NEW YORK CITY

It begins with only a whisper. Like a single spark igniting a firestorm. Holding Strategic Business Contingency meetings among their executive management has proven ineffective. What they thought was a new platform full of promising financial opportunity has indeed generated additional revenue streams, but their focus has been and remains OFF of the “little guy.” All it takes is the smallest catalyst to trigger a chain reaction the news media and corporate conglomerates fear the most.

Executives rely upon a traditional business operations model to work for this new platform: Managers overseeing Editors overseeing their roster of Independent Contractors, Work-For-Hire (the legal term is Work-MADE-For-Hire, but it’s now losing that very important word, ‘MADE’) and Temporary Staff responsible for generating the designated content for the product. These “little guys” are working under the same parameters they always have. For example, writers are contracted to produce content for the company under the same auspices as the writers working for Marvel or DC Comics in 1980. They get their paycheck and whatever intellectual content they generate is no longer theirs, but owned indefinitely by the company. Even if an employee creates a character or product that becomes a multi-billion dollar franchise, she has no right to financial compensation beyond her Work-MADE-For-Hire contract. Why do you think Jack Kirby’s family has been in a legal battle with the Marvel Empire for a share in the billions of dollars the company makes from Kirby’s creative genius?

High above the New York City street traffic, the corporate executives meet to discuss their Strategic Business Contingency plans, again. This time, they’ll have to face a double-edged sword. Or else risk exposing the sweat shops of their information entertainment divisions.

Employees hired to generate content for these growing Multimedia and Digital platforms are neither compensated, nor feel obligated, nor have reason to maintain Confidentiality as they did before. Non-Disclosure Agreements used to keep company policies and internal operations away from public scrutiny. But when hundreds of people are treated as expendable and with the nubile, job-seeking youth always in supply, the question for these media mega-giants will be how to save face when their former employees wise up and use the anonymity of multimedia platforms to air the dirty laundry.

What is the first corporate media giant you think of when you hear that a “former employee reveals how he was told to lie in his coverage, writing for ______ ?”

If you said, “News Corporation or FOX News,” then I am afraid you are too easily swayed by the media propaganda.

I am referring, actually, to this article about AOL: An AOL Content Slave Speaks Out

This will not be the last testimonial from a person who has been a writer or producer behind the “news” that millions of people consume every day. AOL and News Corporation are furthermore, not the only companies who operate under similar moral/ethical ambiguities as detailed apropos of this article. The truth is, THEY ALL OPERATE THIS WAY. In fact, it’s getting worse due to the online start-ups. The Huffington Post, for example, was a brand built and made profitable by the “little guys,” who in this specific case, were generating content for FREE and received little to no compensation or credit when Arianna Huffington sold it to AOL.

When I say the decline in journalism today has reached a breaking point, I mean it. It’s no longer publish or perish. It’s Spin. Whoever can spin the best story gets the most hits. The better the Spin Doctor, the more valuable you are to the corporate executives sitting in their Strategic Planning meeting.

Understand, what you read as news is really just spin doctored information produced with the intent to out-spin its rival multimedia platforms. Expecting journalism to be what it used to be remains more than ever before, an exercise in futility.

“Don’t believe what you read in the papers.”

It’s all propaganda. It’s all a telephone game. Wake up and smell the coffee–it stinks!

Recognize how the media itself is spinning out of control. We’re all caught in the Spin together. If the audience does not stop consuming what these media giants are producing, then they will suck us all straight down with their spin-doctored “news.” Do we want to end up back into the Dark Ages?

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. I will keep saying it until more people begin to realize it’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a mysterious new dynamic in our reality:

There is a new species in the habitat and it’s not biological. It’s viral.

DEVELOPING…

Copyright 2011 by Kimberly Cox, All Rights Reserved