Pause a moment
I’d like to speculate…
The newspapers really dislike you… well, most of you… the ones that have websites and blogs and such.
In fact, the traditional print media, as a whole, sees you as a threat – as competition. And many of you are. You write far wittier, more astute and produce more relevant copy than they can… and then you give it away, for free.
I can understand why they are threatened. It’s hard to lose a monopoly.
It’s also hard to lose at monopoly, but that’s another story…
The thing I don’t understand though is how they try to cope with this threat. Rather than embracing the new media and involving it in their business, they prefer to react with name calling. For a start, they coined the terms ‘traditional media’ and ‘new media’ as if in some way this is like ‘Coke’ and ‘New Coke’. Still, I can’t think of better terms, so I’ll let that go…
1. You’re not professionally trained
True, although it’s not like you are attempting brain surgery. This part comes from believing that somehow journalism is difficult and that you have to spend many years working towards being able to tell people what your opinion is, or to report some facts.
2. You’re biased
And newspapers aren’t? It’s no secret that the owners of most traditional media outlets are in it for the power. They’re not exactly sharing the news out of the goodness of their hearts. Some evidence of this is the fact that many newspapers run at a loss – why else would a businessman hold on to something that loses money?
3. Traditional media employs editors to correct copy and check facts
This may be true, but it doesn’t stop some terrible typos and some rather incorrect ‘facts’ from being published. This sort of links in with the first point – if professional training is so important, why is it that you need someone to spell-check a document for you? I know bloggers occasionally make a mistake, I do it all the time, especially where punctuation is concerned, but the truth is that I’m the only person to read my copy before it gets published. For a newspaper, a typical article gets read by at least three people, and anything in a book is usually read by four… you really shouldn’t have any mistakes at all.
As for checking facts, again, I could understand this accusation if the newspapers printed only the truth. Speculation it seems is a good way to fill a few pages. Follow that with opinion and you have two get-out clauses for printing fiction. Failing that you can settle out of court to maintain your integrity, should an ‘error’ occur.
4. You’re putting people out of jobs
Apparently, paid film critics have been hit the most since us bloggers will actually pay to watch a film and then let everyone know what we thought of it. And this links in with point number two – if you are getting paid to review something, you already have a vested interest… how can you not be biased? I’d rather trust a critic who, like me has had to hand over their hard earned cash for the pleasure as opposed to someone who gets to see films for free on a regular basis. The same goes for restaurant critics too – I’m sorry but your free-loading days are over, you will become extinct if you don’t find a way to change.
…
I’d like to speculate further…
I think that what is going on here is the traditional media voicing its fears, not about new media, but about itself. Blogs and websites and such have eroded away their air of authority which, for so long, comforted them about their inadequacies and now they are faced with the realisation that they have provided the groundwork for people like you and I to put them out of business.
I consider my blogging to have been a total failure so far. I guess being hilarious AND awesome just isn’t enough of a niche. Maybe my new comic will do better, assuming I manage to get it out on a regular basis.
You keep me entertained, Mr Joe… and now that I’m following you on twitter too…
It’s completely natural that they’ve set us up to depose them, their fear and sputtering, and unwillingness to change is also natural. We’ll be the same way in a hundred years. : )
How exciting!
I always look forward to finding out what is going to replace me… I wonder what it is that will replace blogging… I suppose the short form of things like twitter, that is smaller more discreet bursts of information… but past that? I reckon that eventually it’ll be intrinsic, that you’ll have it sent straight to your brain, all that information about what your friends and loved ones are up to. It may be automatic too – you won’t have to consider what to write, it’ll just happen.
There will be no excuse for missing a post then…
Especially considering you can work on the subway, or during dinner…. I wish I knew what the “next thing” was… I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here jawing to people on the internet if I did — I’d be at the patent office.
It is their own fault for not keeping up with the medium. It isn’t as though the internet just snuck up on us all. And blogs have been around for about a decade. The big papers could have gotten in on blogging at the ground floor and then shifted their operations more in that direction once the print side started to falter financially.
The benefits of blogs vs. print media is that we put things out faster and we have greater ability to track a story through a long period of time. As for fact checking, I tend to trust blogs more than papers because most reputable blogs will include a direct link to where they got their facts from if you should want to check it out for yourself.
I will be amazed if print publications are stil prominent twenty years from now (I’m actually betting on extinction).
Newspapers may very well go extinct, but it’ll take some time. The babyboomers all have to kick the bucket essentially. Internet penetration rates are only about 70% in the USA, some audiences are obviously higher, and some much lower, but even out of the entire 70%, far fewer I’m guessing get their news from the net. My grandma and even father are case in point, both have email and even Flickr accounts but largely that was my doing. They don’t by default go to the net for news they go to the newspaper. The real problem is that they also aren’t really big spenders, ones living on a pension and the other quite nearly is. It seems the young and educated (read the people with lots of disposable income) don’t go to the newspaper for news and never will so the high end ads will migrate away from newspapers as that population ages.
The thing I like about “traditional media” is that they’re accountable. We bloggers don’t have to explain anything, and we can just shrug and go ‘eh!’ if someone points out that we’re wrong. Not too bad for opinion, but kind dangerous as far as facts go. Unless you’re trying to read the media in China.
I’m not a big fan of media in general.
If you read one article, you have to read another dozen to check the accuracy of the facts.
I stopped buying a certain high end audio/hi-fi mag when I realised that the articles on speakers and amps were always followed a few pages later by a few paged glossy ad for the mentioned product.
I totally agree with the points you made.
You did miss the good things about printed press.
It makes great fire lighters, is good for packing glasses for a move, keeps down those pesky trees that clutter our beautiful rainforests.
Adam brings up an interesting point, what will be the next form of communication. As our attention spans shrink we’ve gone from reading books to magazines to newspapers to blog post to short blog posts to twitter posts, what’s next? What can hold our ever shrinking attention span long enough to get the point across?
I’m afraid the day will come when I log on to the internet and all I see is a smiley face, the scary part is, I’ll be content with that, I’ll check it every five minutes, sometimes it will change to a sad face and I’ll reply with another sad face, then I’ll check it again in ten minutes and it’ll be an angry face and my blood pressure will go up at the outrage.
Oh boy I can’t wait to see what the future holds…
Single word posts will probably be an interim… I might give that a go for a week at some point in the future… that said, the idea of the interacting faces is more than just plausible.
Pause a moment…nice
“It’s also hard to lose at monopoly…”
Um, i don’t know about you adam but i find it quite easy to lose at monopoly
That was BRILLIANT.
Seriously, Adam, this is the best Flowfield Unity ever. I want this on a t-shirt.
Ahh, interesting point that… I’m thinking of making t-shirts in the same way I make my books, that is rather than going the cafepress route etc, I’ll make them by hand, and each one will be different enough to call it individual… If this pans out (it won’t be until November) then you can have any design you want on a t-shirt.
… I’m glad you like
Me too!
Front and back. with font options…maybe.
Print media that goes to new (official web sites, online subscriptions) embrace the medium but then might become even more exclusive with its membership.
Unlike the police departments that will occasionally employ the knowledge of an experienced and very successful criminal, print media does not think to call in the minds and vocabulary of unpaid bloggers, who frequently write more accurately and amusingly.
Paid film critics are shooed away so that general lifestyle writers can take their place. They write about pig farms one day and Ne Le Dis Personne the next.
I think you can buy this on t-shirt. I’m sure the search of this site will be able to provide the link (so many shirts to buy).
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[...] Flowfield Unity: 31st August, 3rd [...]
Another advantage that exists sometimes within the “new media” is specialisation. I used to read music magazines a lot. Now I usually just buy them for the free CDs.
The point is that I would always spot glaring inaccuracies in them, including getting the names of artists wrong or posting a rumour that a band are back together and in the studio when all other evidence suggests they are in separate countries. Now I can go to websites dedicated to such bands and know that although the news (rumour) might not be any more accurate than the print press (I doubt they’re much less accurate though) the writers know enough about the bands history to at least get that part right.
If they don’t? Many websites, such as this fine one I’m currently on have comment spaces underneath the articles, allowing people to challenge so called information when it turns out to be garbage. With the print press you are limited to sending in your letter of complaint and hoping that the editor seems fit to publish it in the next issue. Even if they do how many people will buy the issue with the erroneous article, but not the following week’s?
That’s not to say there aren’t huge flaws inherent in new media as well.
I would class Wikipedia as one of the problems of the digital media, but to be fair it’s also a problem of the print media as well these days.
Hi dear friends, It sometimes seems, indeed, as if a genre is only dearly defined (its secret revealed) at the moment when it ceases to exist, when it can no longer be exclusive.
Thanks
[...] not all of the time. I was tempted to correct the missing punctuation, but figured that it made this strip a little more [...]