I wrote last night about Tom Stites’ talk on the media given at the recent Media Giraffe Conference. The ideas he has bear more discussion.

He says the media are out of touch. The outlets of fair, quality reporting on vital local and national issues have a disconnect from the people they think they serve, and that gap is failing democracy. In short, people have ready access to less and less information with which to make smart choices about their lives and government.

For the sake of argument, let’s say I’m the media. Who is “me”?

I’m college educated and have a vocabulary to match. I’m white (or white enough for it not to matter) and male. I don’t want for anything one would call a necessity - I haven’t gone to bed hungry save for when I was too lazy to feed myself. I have two computers, two iPods and wi-fi at home. I read The Economist and Mother Jones, because I consciously seek balance in what media I take in. I religiously watch Jon Stewart and Charlie Rose. I religiously avoid church. I divide beer into categories (lager, ale, weiss, stout), and tend to shun lager (what most people call “beer”) because it doesn’t “do it” for me. I don’t shop at Wal-Mart if I can help it and I would rather take my chances with raw fish than with McDonald’s. If I buy milk, it’s made from soy beans.

Remember the book What’s the Matter With Kansas? that was popular a few years ago? All of those traits add up to a guy who’d stick out like an alien with antennae in deep Kansas. And that guy, for the sake of this essay, is the media.

So, what can the me that is the media do about it? I shake my head at the vitriolic half-truths of people like Bill O’Reilly. (Hell, the paper I work for is even on his shit list, though he doesn’t offer concrete evidence why on his site.) I read enough current events to know that media like him and Jon Stewart - who’s at least purposely comic - fails the people who base their news diet on it. At the same time, if you believe Stites’ statistics, media like me fail to even reach those audiences.

The cost-cutting corporate culture of many media outlets isn’t helping. That makes wire reports a crutch and those squeeze out local reports - on crime in the neighborhood, school boards, local government and real checkbook issues, things that help people make better decisions. The up-culturing of reporters and editors (newspapers rarely, if ever, hire candidates without degrees) isn’t helping. The employees that remain after all the cost cutting tend to have the issues associated with college-educated people. Those with college degrees are still less than a third of American adults.

Readers and viewers see it.

Stites frames the issue as one of income, but statistics show a strong link between education and income. As a journalist, I make nearly twice what the official poverty level is for a family of four. That’s fine by me. But, I guess, like many in the “liberal media,” I could stand to come down off my hyper-educated, soy-milk and ale-drinking, sushi-eating, 401(k)-having, iPod-jamming, blog-writing high horse and go to a baseball game now and again.

This is a long think piece by a guy named Tom Stites on the widening gaps between the media, the people and democracy. Click through if you have a lot of time on your hands. It’s worth it if you’re as passionate about the media as I am.

I don’t know Stites, and hadn’t heard of him until I found the piece through Romenesko, a media junkie blog. Still, it seems his years of experience have hardened into insight on this industry and, by extension, democracy.

Stites thinks the media are out of touch with low income readers and viewers, and in many ways have given up aiming for them. You can call them Joe Six-Pack or Sally Waits-Tables, but whatever you call them debases them and alienates them further. They’re people, with lives, loves and concerns.

They read, but just not newspapers, and definitely not blogs. They have no use for stock quotes or tips on picking the best $300 handbag. Real people need real information. To survive. To get the most from their paychecks, their neighborhoods and the country they (we) live in. Stites is concerned they don’t get that information - at least not enough of it.

And, he’s inspired me to write more, but not until I’ve slept it over.