Newsonomics: Twelve Trends That Will Shape the News You Get. Ken Doctor. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010. 219 pp.
Ken Doctor is a “Leading Media Industry Analyst.” It says so right under his name on the cover of his new book, Newsonomics. A former managing editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Doctor spent twenty-one years with Knight Ridder. Now, as an analyst for a company called Outsell, he has joined the cottage industry that proclaims the future of media for all who will pay to listen.
How does he foretell the future? Mostly, it seems, by reading blogs. Apparently that is where all the wisdom required to understand the future of the mass media can be found. What method do bloggers use? “We build on each other’s ideas,” explains Doctor, “engage in intellectual battles.”