Long before the days when The Devil Wears Prada entered the everyday lexicon and before Lauren pretended to intern at Teen Vogue, I dreamed of finally growing up and joining the shimmering mirage of media and magazines. In one of my many media internships, I chanced upon a high up staff member who had worked everywhere from The London Review of Books to the Economist and was one of the editorial directors of an incredibly prestigious, “wow” brand type of magazine. In the most diplomatic way she could, she basically advised me, the young, eager and willing upstart, to look for a career elsewhere. Obviously it wasn’t because of my less than burgeoning talent in picking up coffees or running errands – necessary jobs of an intern, and something you cannot stuff up. Instead, it was more along the lines of her likening the magazine industry to dinosaurs.
Now the whole “oh, old media is dying, new media is taking over the world” kind of gist isn’t new of course. What is frustrating however is that the traditional media seems more or less unwilling to change, instead they seem to be taking the passive angst route, where they sit silently, and bite their fingernails while waiting for their imminent death.
So I’m sure we’re all aware that the traditional media isn’t really going anywhere. There’s something that’s seductive about the tactile nature of glossy, glossy paper, thick covers, and the feeling over outstretched broadsheet newspapers, or, maybe that’s just me. I can channel my inner 10 year old and wield scissors to create inspiration collages (what, did none of you watch that episode where Blair in Gossip Girl has her prom collage book… oh never mind). And some news outlets have been exploring the online world. New York Times has an impressive online presence and I love them for not letting me pay to read their archives (unlike Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker, boo to you). The fact is though, for sites that make you pay to view their archives (7 days or longer in the case of WSJ) someone will often copy and paste the best articles elsewhere anyway where I’ll be able to read it for free.
At the other side of the ring there’s new media of course. It’s fast – breaking news really and truly is breaking news. It’s democratic – Tavi, the thirteen year old fashion blogger has (theoretically) the same audience exposure as Hamish Bowles. And liberating to an extent – it’s fun that I can sit here and type really w h a t e v e r I want and no one can stop me, I don’t need to please advertisers, and an editor won’t re-read it and cut out all my favourite bits, Gossip Girl references and all. Then there are websites like The Fashion Spot, an online forum where people scan the best pages of the magazine for people to read, all for free of course.
New media isn’t all that though. I joined Twitter recently, the online universe where Ashton Kutcher reigns supreme to see what all the fuss was about. It was fun at first to flick through people’s recommended links, their updates, but after a while I had to ask – what was this adding to my life? Did I really need an hour by hour synopsis of what Demi Moore was doing – I mean I’m a fan of her in St Elmo’s Fire and all and it did fulfill my mild voyeuristic curiosity, but it did take up unnecessary brain space. And the fact is that with blogs especially, there’s just a lot of crap out there (cue a low blow joke regarding the content of this blog, snap). Anyone remember what happened when a student messed around with the Wikipedia entry on Maurice Jarre? He added a false quote, only to see it picked up by BBC Music magazine and The Guardian, no less. Blogs are filled with copy and pasted information from elsewhere. As a result, there is ultimately no real, true and valuable information, but a messy maze like collage of everything else. Worst still are the plethora of simple grammatical and spelling errors. At the risk of sounding like a fuddy duddy (in my defense I’m in my early 20s), it does make me fearful about the worldwide literacy rates and education levels. In regards to what I mentioned earlier about the democratic and liberal nature of the online medium, it really encourages sloppiness that is just mind-bogglingly unacceptable. Thank goodness for sub editors in traditional media. So generally, a lot of ’stuff’ out there online is not weak in content, but also in execution.
That’s not to say that traditional media are the epitome of good writing and material. But that’s the point. The most obvious difference between the two types of media (for ease, if you haven’t picked it up yet, I’ve dubbed the ‘polarities’ as traditional media and new media) is time. The time it takes for most magazines for instance can be anywhere from one month to three, not including the planning of the general ‘theme’ of the magazine, which can take as long as to one year or more. Blurry Twitter photos, no matter how fast they hit the web don’t speak a thousand words. Traditional media need to acknowledge what makes them different and exploit them. They have resources and funds that can bankroll more exciting projects than the average blogger at home (ie me) can dream of in a lifetime. A lot of online portals do not have the capacities to generate original material, so why should magazines rely on heavy reprinting and lazy advertorials? I’m not too impressed when a magazine writes about “breaking news” – in world where everyone wants the something shiny, bright and new there is a precarious expiry date on information.
The fact is, neither medias can afford to rest on their laurels, if you can call them that (I genuinely would consider ‘laurels’ as relatively safe – I wouldn’t call either medias ’safe’ for now). It is possible that both can coexist – they are now, albeit perhaps not as happily as they claim. In a time of budget cuts, exploring an online media portal is not an easy way to chase advertising dollars. The fact that the New York Times is considering making their archives available only to those who pay because their advertising revenue aren’t meeting budgets is cause enough. Should traditional media want to expand their brand online, they can’t be lazy about it. Re-hashing news that is printed elsewhere, even a few days to a week late comes across as unprofessional and unnecessary. The reader out there is smarter than what traditional media thinks. New media is the super-keen alter-ego, eager to please and eager to change, however stubborn, arrogant and overly confident in its abilities. What both medias need to do is to be aware of their faults and their possibilities and exploit them. As I mentioned, the time frame of traditional media has long been cited as an impediment, but with some thinking outside of the box on how to best utilise this, they really can make something worthwhile. In times like this of the big ‘R’ word (recession, if you’ve been living under a rock) and the closure of magazines (Domino, Portfolio, Australian Glamour even before it opened), widespread layoffs (breaking news! Today, 10th June 2009, the New York Observer have cut a third of its 30-40 edit team) and instability of media businesses (ACP in Australia), it’s a good time for media to do some self-reflection, cut off the proverbial fat of the unnecessary and superflous, and give the readers something actually worthwhile.
Edited to add:
I came back because I had literally just read about the New York Observer’s layoffs announced today, in the name of cost cutting. Most of their layoffs are from the editorial team – the ones who were saved were the beat reporters who produce daily stories. In times like these, the flood of new, daily information isn’t something that’s worthwhile to compete against. I say that the Observer should have played to its strengths (gossipy, social critiques in feature length format) and kept its feature and editorial writers. They also have said that their freelance budget would increase. Now freelance writers would demand more than salaried writers, so I suppose what they’re hoping for is that they can get these freelancers to bugger off when times are bad (ie now) but start courting them again when they need a meaty article. I wonder what the long term implications of this would be. In the ‘good times’ when the paper has more free rein over its material and would no longer be at the beck and call of advertisers and the supposed need to report on daily news, it would be paying a lot of money out to expensive freelancers. On the other hand, it can be useful because they can control the flow of feature articles, using them accordingly to their financial capabilities at the time. Interesting.
So hello online world! I’m impressed you got to this far.
this is terribly late, but the iran protests, i think, really emphasised the potential of new media. a blurry twitter photo of demi moore’s panty-clad ass may not speak a thousand words, but a blurry photo of an iranian protester, in a situation where foreign journalists have been banned from on the the street reporting, does.
in any case, i agree that both new and traditional media need to find – and capitalise on – their strengths. i really liked this entry.