More thoughts on “New Media”

My last post touched on my increasing feelings of comfort when it comes to the passing of old ways, even if those old ways are comfortable, familiar, and rich in tradition. Even if the transition is sure to be bumpy and awkward in places. I keep thinking and reading about all this. I guess for people who ARE the media, in some ways it's the ONLY story right now. Anyway, I had some more scattered thoughts over the past few days as I continue to consider and discuss these ideas:

As I mentioned in the last post, there are plenty of concerns about what the new media cannot do – resource-wise – that an old media outlet, like the Washington Post could. But, as Huffington Post blogger Ari Herzog argues, there are also things that new media can do that old media couldn’t imagine. It certainly seems to be rapidly solidifying conventional wisdom that we are inevitably moving towards some sort of hybrid old & new – a balance of corporate resources (since there will surely be corporations where there is money to be made) and the flexible, so-called “citizen-journalist” model of the current new media. In other words, we will find a natural balance between "some random dude uploading pictures of the Hudson River plane crash to Flickr for free" and "shelling out $1.25 in quarters into a newspaper box to flip through inky, broadsheet pages an entire day after the event to see those same pictures." The Huffington Post itself is surely one of these types of synergized (is that a word?) entities. I don’t think I would consider it a perfect model, but it is certainly a fascinating jumping-off point.

Also on the positive side of the coin for “new media” – huge corporate marketing efforts with bloated budgets and vast resources can't necessarily make something big anymore. Put another way: a tiny operation, or super-low-budget outfit has a hugely increased opportunity for wide success in the leveled playing field of YouTubes and the like. YouTube videos posted from some luminary (like Barack Obama!) are no different than Joe Blow’s posts. Tad Friend wrote a piece in the New Yorker, which was both fascinating and nauseating, about the marketing of major motion pictures, in which the manipulation of a film for maximum marketability (is that a word?) is laid pretty bare.

In this way, the major movie studios, record labels, media conglomerates, etc, are no friend to consumers, and there seems little reason to weep for their passing. Movies and music remain nothing more (or less) than profit margins to huge media conglomerates, without a passing concern for the quality of a product or its innovation or creativity. Safe bets, mass-produced and homogenized to appeal to literally as many people as humanly possible oftentimes leaves you with a mealy, mishmash of lowest-common-denominator ideas. As Tad Friend indicates in that New Yorker article, with an eye on the bottom line, a media company will add to a movie some fart jokes for boys, some action for men, friendship & fashion for women...add it all together and you get the worst movie ever conceived and created! Ultimately, however, even though we are all used to the studio system and the major label system, we probably will get better, more innovative, more creative products if artists/creators/musicians/filmmakers don't have to co-opt their ideas for an executive who cares nothing about the content or quality and cares everything for the $$.

This, of course is also a tired old cliché – the brilliant artists who are forced to sell out and taint their perfect artistic visions with crass commercialism. Another way to look at it is that people who market products can help artists actually sell their work instead of laboring endlessly as talented yet uncompromising amateurs. It kind of melts my brain to imagine how many endlessly terrible bands and writers and filmmakers will be given (ARE being given!) a platform for their total garbage – equal footing with people infinitely more talented. But isn’t this what democracy is all about? The cream rises to the top. With a level playing field, it just means that super-expensive cream and low-budget cream have a more similar chance at success. That is certainly good in theory. Good enough in theory that I don't have a problem trying it out for awhile, at any rate. It seems to be working so far, as major corporations teeter and this "new media" jazz makes speedy inroads...

The further flip side, though, is that this level playing field makes it much harder to reach a wide audience. A consumer can theoretically find the one video made by the one person whom they most identify with. A new media mind-meld! Taken to the absurd, yet logical extreme, imagine a model – a non-lucrative model, it almost goes without saying – where artists can find their one perfect audience member; your favorite band could be a band that only makes music for you! On a more realistic level, this fragmentation also means that there will be no (or far fewer) huge, unifying media events – like The Dark Knight or Titanic or Star Wars or whatever. The muscle and reach and power of the national, major media companies can be a huge blessing to some artists – there are plenty of major studio films and major studio albums that are amazing and even transcendent. But those are few, compared to the massive output of a creative country – nay, WORLD. The tiny percentage of bands and movies (etc) that the all-powerful Fountain of the major media corps chooses to bless certainly reaps huge rewards. But the far more enormous percentage of artists labor in total obscurity. Some of that obscurity is deserved for sure, but some is surely not. The collapse of the conglomerates would seem to mean the select few that have been carried very high will surely be brought lower, but the opportunities for the major mass of other artists to scale higher heights are enormously increased.

Think about music videos that go viral (like OK Go on treadmills), or homemade videos (like Numa Numa, which we have discussed here before), or self-published books that end up at #1 on the NYTimes bestseller list (like The Shack by William P. Young) – all unprecedented levels of success without any major funding or mass-media backing. But also think about the controversy that erupted around the “don’t tase me bro” homemade video or the other kid who was tasered at the UCLA library – videos like these are powerful, immediate, and have effected real change. Videos like these can outperform both expensive studio productions and the best news team on the planet.

As with all things, if people get something better, that’s what they’ll use. I don’t read print newspapers anymore because I can read everything online. It’s cheaper, simpler, and also easier to share with others. Lots of people are like me, which means that the old way of doing business for newspapers has got to change. Sorry to upset the comfortable apple cart, folks, but this is better. If bloggers and twitterers and flickr photographers are able to beat the conventional news media to the punch, as Ari Herzog says, then I’m sorry conventional news media, but you’ve got to switch it up! Or go the way of the telegraph, obviously. That used to be big too.

Ari Herzog's aforementioned article is absolutely worth reading: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-herzog/why-old-media-cant-deny-n_b_160239.html