What Do Punditry & Marketing Have in Common?

I've been watching the Democratic National Convention. While most criticisms about conventions are directed at their informercialness, my biggest criticism is of the coverage itself. Punditry has hit a new low. It now takes a dozen people to say absolutely nothing.

Most of the time I'm watching the so-called experts, I'm wondering why in the world they're not talking to real people. To hear a pundit say, "The strength of this speech is that it appeals to the blue-collar working-class swing-voter in Scranton"--and then NOT cut to an actual blue-collar working-class swing-voter from Scranton--seems absurd.

The Internet (specifically social media) has brought this expectation with it. Call it the death of the filter. CNN's entire "Best Political Team on Television" is a filter based on the old model of Expert->Consumer. Most people under 30 don't go for filters. They don't know who James Carville is, nor do they care what he thinks. Or if they do care what he thinks, their next question is, "What do my friends think about what James Carville thinks?"

As with so many things these days, I saw this as another analogy in marketing. So many times, people try to be the speculative pundit filter. In extreme cases, they actually don't care what their customers think. More often, they simply "think" they already know. But they don't actually ask. They'd rather speculate, so they can't be proven wrong.

I've been working on a product that addresses this, which is in a beta phase right now. Call it a way of eliminating Pat Buchanan and James Carville and getting right to Scranton.