In the last month and a half the news of the world previously known as print media continues to be grim. The Washington Post closes its bureaus, announces that Washington is the only place to be if you’re a WP staffer. Conde Nast listening to McKinsey & Co. shutters a parenting title (Cookies), two brides mags, and Gourmet. Metropolitan Home folds. Going back to 08, 525 magazines folded including Home, and Wondertime (a Disney joint). In October this year it was 383 more. Some 64 more went from print to online only so far this year.
Of course I have a dog in the race because I changed from a print editor to an online magazine editor of my own fully owned website this year, and really like it. But I have been wanting a forum to blog on media, so this is the fledgling one.
Earlier this year the prominent blogger known as Newsosaur blogged about the demise of two websites that the Rocky Mountain News journalists had tried to start in Denver after the Rocky, the West’s oldest newspaper, failed earlier this year. Both those websites also failed. Both had startup investors but a bad plan to make money off of subscriptions (the idea was that 50,000 subscribers would pay $5 a month or $60 a year.) But I still found it interesting that Newsosaur reported of the post-Rocky Rocky blogs’ problems this way. First came suggestions the writers wanted to be overpaid (up to the levels they had enjoyed at the paper, owned by Scripps). The second held that the writers continued to insist on presenting things as they had at the paper. Re the first: LOL. Re the second: On Mars.
But even as I came across notes I had jotted at the time I still am pondering one sentence of Newsosaur’s post. It captured my attention along with that of an anonymous commenter. Newsosaur: “Neither of the (Rocky journalist) sites leveraged the power of the Web to weave social networks, enable users to personalize content, or do any of the things that consumers commonly expect from a modern interactive experience.” Anonymous wrote to Newsosaur that he had no idea what this sentence meant, and he should never never write such sentences. Anonymous had a point. But it’s not so much the sentence that is hard to parse as the many meanings behind the elephant’s left tusk, examined by the blind.
“Personalize content,” “weave social networks,” and the implications that readers are now “consumers” in all aspects of their online experience, crabbing over bad service, is just a statement of three problems that might but do not necessarily coalesce into an agenda. Social networks are a route of distribution for new media in a universe still full of old behavior like sitting on couches watching TV and eating pizza while playing with telephones. Personalized content, parsed, probably means more bandwidth than you can afford. Interactivity and media? To some extent media makers are all princes of their own little countries. I can look into my plumber’s toolbox but I can’t hook up the new boiler and wouldn’t know where to start. For a “citizen journalist,” to actually get a good story, seems very 2007. These days citizens on the scene of news tend to characterize a big security breach — or an example of how not to parent. The desires, as reported, of these newsmakers-newsinteractors: To get a reality TV show. Because “real” reality is presumably just no longer satisfying, without the “interactive experience consumers commonly expect“? Italics mine.
I am perplexed. During 25 years as a professional journalist I cannot say that “what do consumers expect, commonly?” has been a question that has regularly guided my practice. As a trained journalist I am meant to know what is newsworthy by experience and instinct. The public is that entity that journalists think of as having a trust in knowing. As a new media producer I am eager to know that some of those others care not just to know but to discern. At my other website of Adobeairstream dot com we’ve had 240,000 page views this month, so I guess so. Thankfully.
But I still wonder: can you be served “interactivity”?And do you commonly expect it? Or do you expect it to be common only to your wishes and group?
The Rocky blogs probably failed because subscription paid sites don’t work.
Still, what seems clear is we are all being watched. Even now. And I will do the same later when I turn back on to see who has watched my perplexed ruminations.
