Postmodern journalism is hard to define
Postmodern journalism is hard to define.
William Powers of the National Journal tries in an article on campaign coverage. He says the media “appear clueless and insecure, unable to decide what matters most, or should matter, about any given candidate” and goes on to identify the conflict.
The problem is that campaign journalism is at once seriously old-fashioned and wildly postmodern. At the old-fashioned end, you’ve got a bunch of reporters moving around with the candidates themselves, breathing the bottled air of the campaign terrarium, and trying to convey this world in their reports. Watch Candidate X as he bounds into the requisite greasy spoon, shakes the requisite hands, and makes the requisite small talk about the requisite big issues. This is American politics at the micro or “retail” level, and You Are There.At the other, postmodern extreme is a different kind of journalism entirely: the dark inside knowledge that all top-flight political reporters possess about how presidential campaigns really work. Based largely on the media’s running conversation with pollsters, consultants, campaign managers, and other hardened political pros, this macro-level strategic coverage has effectively opened up the smoke-filled rooms of old and let the rest of us see what goes on in there.
“The sale” isn’t happening in the diner, or on the phone with pollsters — it’s happening in the great American gut. How about some more coverage of that?
These are the people who’ve experienced the fruit of blue smoke and mirrors. There is no political promise anywhere that can make up for that. The wellspring of Postmodern energy is inexhaustible, because it flows from the people themselves. Technology is opening the eyes of humankind, and they’ll never shut them again.
Professional journalism can’t help but wear the clothing of the culture, and Mr. Powers has done the industry a service in pointing that out. Ultimately, though, the essence of Postmodern journalism isn’t just “in” the American gut; it IS the American gut.
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A bubble is a bubble is a bubble
A bubble is a bubble is a bubble.
The collapse of the Presidential campaign of Howard Dean (rather, the campaign itself) is one of the more amazing political events in my lifetime. That’s why I’m enjoying the exasperated punditry of late. We’re all trying to figure this thing out, because, well, we suspect it’s going to happen again. And if we’ve learned anything in the last couple of decades it’s that the fear of something new disappears if we beat it to death long enough.
So it is with the Howard Dean bubble. Jay Rosen does the world a favor by offering a running summarization of various writings, “Voices at the Crash Site.” If you’re really interested, don’t miss Clay Shirky’s analysis or Katy Butler’s wonderful piece in Salon.
The Dean bubble carried with it a dynamic identical to the Internet bubble of the late 90s, and it bears consideration in the wake of the political events of January 2004. Because the truth is the energy that creates a Postmodern bubble is real, whether the results can be viewed as “real” from a Modernist perspective or not.
I ran an Internet start-up during the bubble years. Given my background in television and my knowledge of people (the start-up was a personality assessment company), I felt strongly that Internet users would only support content that was free and, therefore, advertiser supported. I was passionate about this and raised a lot of money from investors off the energy. When everything fell apart — meaning advertisers didn’t behave as I wanted them to behave — I was perplexed in addition to being broke.
But now advertisers are flocking to the Web, and not just other Internet companies. The trades are filled with stories of Madison Avenue finally “getting it” when it comes to one of Doc Searls’ wonderful axioms, “Television is the best medium ever for advertising, but the Internet is the best for sales.” Wisdom is justified of its children, and I was right back then. So what happened?
There have been many entire books written on that question, and I’m not going to try and rewrite them here. But from where I sit these days, it sure looks a lot like a failure of Modernist reach/frequency, mass marketing.
And, I think, the same thing can be said for the bursting of Howard Dean’s campaign bubble. The Internet is a Postmodern communications medium, something entirely new in my lifetime. It defies understanding from a Modernist mindset. As FCC Chairman, Michael Powell, noted recently, it’s now possible to run a communications business, like a phone company, by “riding existing infrastructure.” The same can be said of a political campaign.
If, in fact, the premise here is that a bottom-up campaign can elect a President, then it follows that the bubble will grow again. It did with advertising. It will with politics. But in order to succeed, I think two things will need to happen. One, it’ll require a candidate who can ride the existing infrastructure. Dean was unable to do that, the proof being every time he opened his mouth. Secondly, I think the future will reveal that you don’t have to buy TV to win, but you’ll have to be able to ride it. That’ll mean creative uses of contributions, which will further the bottom-up campaign.
You simply can’t force a Postmodern anything back into a Modernist mold, and this, I believe, was the ultimate failure of the Dean campaign.
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Bill Maher’s sad pedestal
Bill Maher’s sad pedestal.
I watched Real Time with Bill Maher Friday night, because I wanted to hear what Andrew Sullivan had to say. I wish I’d watched Joan of Arcadia instead. Maher likes to piss people off, and that’s okay, but he gives liberalism a bad name. How? By attempting to be the Rush Limbaugh of the left. Bill, it doesn’t work.
One of the things I had to endure Friday night was his rant against the south, published here as a Salon commentary. (full disclosure: I’ve lived in the south for 25 years) “Lose the twang, y’all,” it’s called — a commentary on how the south needs to accept a candidate from the north in order to defeat the President.
North Carolina Sen. John Edwards has a powerful argument in his bid to be the Democratic nominee when he says, “What I give people is a candidate who can win everywhere in America.”Translation: “We Southerners ain’t gonna vote for no Yankee! You suckers up North will take our Clintons and Carters, but we just ain’t buyin’ Kerrys and Deans.”
And that’s a shame. Not just for Democrats but for democracy itself. And I feel bad for the millions of intelligent people who live in a region still dominated by so much prejudice that anyone who wants to be president better have a twang in his voice and pronounce all four E’s in the word “shit.”
Liberal talk radio will never work if it can’t drop such elitist pronouncements. Talking down to people to get a laugh is one thing, especially if you’re in the safety of your echo chamber, but doing so to make a political point does everybody associated with liberal thinking a gross disservice.
And his argument itself is one of those that stop at the 3rd floor without continuing the intellectual journey. Geography has nothing to do with it, Bill. There are legitimate value differences. Show me a “northern” candidate whose voice resonates with “down here” values, and I’ll show you somebody for whom southern Democrats will vote.
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Why I love the Internet #3,672
Why I love the Internet #3,672
Doc Searls turned me on to this. Sheesh, it must be Friday afternoon. The states in red are those I’ve either lived in or visited in my life.
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Postmodern power and influence: oxymoronic
Postmodern power and influence: oxymoronic.
A New York Times story today is going to get a lot of attention from what’s known in the blogging world (aka: blogosphere) as “the A-list.” This is a group of blogs and bloggers to whom hierarchical power and influence are assigned based on their reach and content.
The story looks at a new study that concludes that the Americans who have flocked to the Internet this campaign season are much more likely than the average citizen to serve as an opinion leader in their community.
The George Washington survey, conducted by telephone and on the Internet with the school’s partners, RoperASW and Nielsen/NetRatings, provides the first close look at who is actually logging on to get and spread political information. Politicians and anyone else interested in political organizing, the survey’s sponsors say, risk considerable harm to their cause by dismissing the importance of the Internet as a potent new tool.“The main finding of the study is that if you want to reach the people who are reaching everyone else, that place is still the Internet,” said Carol Darr, director of the university’s Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet. “The growing support for this medium is not dependent on any one candidate.”
John Hawkins updated his “blogoshere power rankings” this week. This list ranks Weblogs according to their reach, as determined by the good folks at Alexa. Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent so much time studying the culture of the Internet, but I have a problem with establishing anything Web-based in a hierarchical form. What it is, at best, is a Modernist attempt to understand a Postmodern communications medium. It can’t be done. Can chaos be explained logically? Perhaps, but the understanding won’t come from within the chaos, and therein lies the rub. It’s the outside looking in.
Technorati is a wonderful piece of software that helps bloggers see who’s linking to them. The company publishes a “top 100″ blogs based on the numbers of links. This is another hierarchical measurement of blogs.
I’m not happy with the phrase “A-list bloggers” and not because I’m not a member of the club. I think it’s a dangerous affiliation for people who’ve heretofore been associated with power to the people. Jeff Jarvis is an A-list blogger (although I’m still trying to determine who decides membership), and writes frequently about the influence of his blog, the buzzmachine. Whether it’s influencing someone else to blog, the role he’s played in citizen reporting in Iraq, pointing to his climb on Hawkins’ or other lists, appearances on the radio, or referencing how he’s being referenced in other blogs, Jeff is playing the game of power and influence.
I commented on one of his posts this week: “Do the words blog and power really belong in the same phrase? Is that what this is all about — another way to get to the top of the pedestal? I cringe when I read such, because the real power in our universe should belong to the people, not the bloggers. This is analog thinking, IMO.”
His response: “terry… the bloggers are the people, the people are the bloggers. this is power to the people!”
I love Jeff and read his stuff faithfully, but this is a slippery slope. If the bloggers are the people and the people are the bloggers, then why is there an A-list, and, more importantly, why does anybody assume it speaks on behalf of anybody else? If the answer is “it doesn’t,” then why do those of us who are in the blogging community care?
Modernism needs hierarchical references, and that’s what I think is really happening here. It’s logical to assume that the A-list is filtered B-list, which is filtered C-list and so on down the line. It’s equally logical to assume that the A-list influences the B-list, which influences the C-list, etc. The fact is this is not the case, for the ground on the Internet is level and attempts to assign power and influence to a blog or blogger based on mass market reach and frequency measurements does the whole concept a disservice.
Bloggers are people. That’s for sure. But they’re not “the people,” anymore than a specific set of Christian beliefs makes it “the church.” The Web certainly does bring power to the people. It’s the communications tool of Postmodernism, and as such, it cannot and won’t be understood by those with a predominately Modernist worldview. This is what the Howard Dean candidacy missed and what those who are asking “what happened” after Iowa don’t get.
But then, how do you “get” something that can’t be “gotten?”
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Press group cites sites on politics
Press group cites sites on politics.
In a rather humorous illustration of how the mainstream press doesn’t “get” the idea of blogs and blogging, that bastion of journalistic integrity, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, reports that political news Websites have taken a step backwards since the 2000 election. USA Today reports on a new study by the group that reveals these sites contain less original reporting, fewer links to external Web sites and fewer chances to see and hear directly from candidates on their front pages. The 10 sites studied included ABC News, The New York Times, AOL, Yahoo, USA Today and others.
“They’ve clearly become better at telling people where candidates stand,” project director Tom Rosenstiel says. “But there are fewer interactive links, less original reporting and fewer places to see raw video or audio to listen to the candidates themselves.”In terms of original reporting alone, Rosenstiel says, more than a third of online stories (37%) were wire-service copy, up from 25% in 2000. And much of the “original copy” actually consisted of rewritten wire-service stories.
Sites are clearly trying to showcase their uniqueness by offering exclusive polls, Rosenstiel says, but in doing so they often exclude competing polls that might be helpful. “There’s a lot more branding.”
The study gives good marks to some, and those sites are certainly deserving of the kudos. I do wish, however, that the Project for Excellence in Journalism would grasp the significance of the paradigm change currently underway and look outside its own box when studying the Internet.
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Press group cites sites on politics
Press group cites sites on politics.
In a rather humorous illustration of how the mainstream press doesn’t “get” the idea of blogs and blogging, that bastion of journalistic integrity, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, reports that political news Websites have taken a step backwards since the 2000 election. USA Today reports on a new study by the group that reveals these sites contain less original reporting, fewer links to external Web sites and fewer chances to see and hear directly from candidates on their front pages. The 10 sites studied included ABC News, The New York Times, AOL, Yahoo, USA Today and others.
“They’ve clearly become better at telling people where candidates stand,” project director Tom Rosenstiel says. “But there are fewer interactive links, less original reporting and fewer places to see raw video or audio to listen to the candidates themselves.”In terms of original reporting alone, Rosenstiel says, more than a third of online stories (37%) were wire-service copy, up from 25% in 2000. And much of the “original copy” actually consisted of rewritten wire-service stories.
Sites are clearly trying to showcase their uniqueness by offering exclusive polls, Rosenstiel says, but in doing so they often exclude competing polls that might be helpful. “There’s a lot more branding.”
The study gives good marks to some, and those sites are certainly deserving of the kudos. I do wish, however, that the Project for Excellence in Journalism would grasp the significance of the paradigm change currently underway and look outside its own box when studying the Internet.
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Local Search: big and getting bigger
Local Search: big and getting bigger.
Efforts by Google and Yahoo to get into the local search market are turning results, and that means more trouble for broadcasters, newspapers and even the Yellow Pages. Much of the ad dollars pouring into the Internet these days comes from search, where companies are paying for placement within the search string or adjacent to it. Charlene Li, an analyst with market tracker Forrester Research, told USA Today, “This market has a huge potential, because most people do their shopping locally. The problem is, most people don’t know how to do searches locally on the Internet. But that’s going to change.”
I’ve written about this before and agree completely with Ms. Li. It’s going to get more and more sophisticated, and anybody whose business model depends on local advertising needs to pay attention. If companies like The Yellow Pages would stop trying to be old media for a minute, they might see that their database — with some modifications and additions — would be capable of creating a very nice local search.
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Local Search: big and getting bigger
Local Search: big and getting bigger.
Efforts by Google and Yahoo to get into the local search market are turning results, and that means more trouble for broadcasters, newspapers and even the Yellow Pages. Much of the ad dollars pouring into the Internet these days comes from search, where companies are paying for placement within the search string or adjacent to it. Charlene Li, an analyst with market tracker Forrester Research, told USA Today, “This market has a huge potential, because most people do their shopping locally. The problem is, most people don’t know how to do searches locally on the Internet. But that’s going to change.”
I’ve written about this before and agree completely with Ms. Li. It’s going to get more and more sophisticated, and anybody whose business model depends on local advertising needs to pay attention. If companies like The Yellow Pages would stop trying to be old media for a minute, they might see that their database — with some modifications and additions — would be capable of creating a very nice local search.
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My last word on the CBS/MTV/Janet Jackson stunt
My last word on the CBS/MTV/Janet Jackson stunt.
I grew up with rock-n-roll in the late 50s and 60s. It was then and is now largely about rebellion. I remember the flap over The Doors singing “Light My Fire” on the Ed Sullivan Show. Outrageous, oft-times shocking behavior shouldn’t surprise anybody when it comes to rock-n-roll. But here’s another thing. Rock artists stick together, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if every female entertainer at the Grammys pops her right breast Sunday night, despite efforts by CBS to stop it. It’s appearing more and more like this was an entirely planned “shock,” but the fallout hasn’t been. That’s been very real, and it is to the fallout that artists and entertainers must now respond. This could go on for a very long time.
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My last word on the CBS/MTV/Janet Jackson stunt
My last word on the CBS/MTV/Janet Jackson stunt.
I grew up with rock-n-roll in the late 50s and 60s. It was then and is now largely about rebellion. I remember the flap over The Doors singing “Light My Fire” on the Ed Sullivan Show. Outrageous, oft-times shocking behavior shouldn’t surprise anybody when it comes to rock-n-roll. But here’s another thing. Rock artists stick together, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if every female entertainer at the Grammys pops her right breast Sunday night, despite efforts by CBS to stop it. It’s appearing more and more like this was an entirely planned “shock,” but the fallout hasn’t been. That’s been very real, and it is to the fallout that artists and entertainers must now respond. This could go on for a very long time.
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Amex putting Seinfeld and Superman online
Amex putting Seinfeld and Superman online.
This is a brilliant move by American Express, a company known for marketing innovations. The story, as reported in AdAge, is that Amex will produce 5 minute segments with a live Jerry Seinfeld and an animated Superman and make them available on their Website. The idea is to attract young men, something Amex thinks is useless via television. Amex chief marketing officer John Hayes says they’re calling them “Seinfeld Webisodes” and that American Express likes the Internet.
Mr. Hayes said American Express has dramatically altered its marketing communications strategies and continues to place ever more emphasis on the emerging technologies, such as the Web, that have changed audience consumption patterns.“Why the Web?” he asked. “Because it has already proven to be a primary [audience and customer] acquisition channel for the future.”
Mr. Hayes was critical of the speed and effectiveness with which TV has adapted — or failed to adapt — to new market realities and indicated his company has made a fundamental shift away from that medium.
“As the current 2003-04 television season got under way in September,” he explained, “it became apparent to the networks and the advertisers that something was amiss, if not simply missing young men. … The bottom line is that the traditional network television business is in enormous transition. The next-generation media consumer will redefine the new rules even before they are written, leaving marketers and communications companies more challenged than ever before.”
He said that in 1994 American Express devoted nearly 80% of its advertising media-buying budget to TV. Today, 10 years later, company ad spending for TV has fallen to 35% of its media-buying budget.
“We have moved out of the ‘buying’ world and [have] entered the world of content and channel integration in a significant way,” he said.
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Amex putting Seinfeld and Superman online
Amex putting Seinfeld and Superman online.
This is a brilliant move by American Express, a company known for marketing innovations. The story, as reported in AdAge, is that Amex will produce 5 minute segments with a live Jerry Seinfeld and an animated Superman and make them available on their Website. The idea is to attract young men, something Amex thinks is useless via television. Amex chief marketing officer John Hayes says they’re calling them “Seinfeld Webisodes” and that American Express likes the Internet.
Mr. Hayes said American Express has dramatically altered its marketing communications strategies and continues to place ever more emphasis on the emerging technologies, such as the Web, that have changed audience consumption patterns.“Why the Web?” he asked. “Because it has already proven to be a primary [audience and customer] acquisition channel for the future.”
Mr. Hayes was critical of the speed and effectiveness with which TV has adapted — or failed to adapt — to new market realities and indicated his company has made a fundamental shift away from that medium.
“As the current 2003-04 television season got under way in September,” he explained, “it became apparent to the networks and the advertisers that something was amiss, if not simply missing young men. … The bottom line is that the traditional network television business is in enormous transition. The next-generation media consumer will redefine the new rules even before they are written, leaving marketers and communications companies more challenged than ever before.”
He said that in 1994 American Express devoted nearly 80% of its advertising media-buying budget to TV. Today, 10 years later, company ad spending for TV has fallen to 35% of its media-buying budget.
“We have moved out of the ‘buying’ world and [have] entered the world of content and channel integration in a significant way,” he said.
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Broadcasting’s blindspot: site registration
Broadcasting’s blindspot: site registration.
The Washington Post will begin a more indepth site registration process for their highly profitable washingtonpost.com Website. According to the paper, users will be asked to provide a job title, a description of their primary responsibility, the size of their company and the industry in which they work. Users will also have to provide an e-mail address and password to enter the site. The site already requires gender, age and Zip code. Users who provide Zip codes in the Washington area will also have to give their home address.
The more specific demographic information gleaned from the registrations allows media companies to charge more for advertisements targeted to the groups most likely to buy a product or service, according to online experts.“We are confident that this new registration initiative will help to continue the remarkable growth we’ve seen in ad revenue,” Caroline Little, chief executive and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.
The site had 5.1 million visitors in December, so you might be asking why they would want to mess with a successful equation? After all, aren’t some people likely to balk at the intrusion?
Newspapers are far ahead of broadcasters when it comes to understanding online customers, because their historical business model isn’t based entirely on reach and frequency. However, TV revenue is entirely built on numbers of eyeballs, albeit those within certain advertiser-friendly demographic groups. I’m opposed to subscriber fees for most news sites, because every survey I’ve seen indicates users would much rather deal with advertising than pay for content. However, contextual advertising — driven by a database — is THE revenue model for the Internet, and you can’t do that without registration. This is a blindspot that’s hard for broadcasters to get beyond. “If I force my users to register, what’s to keep them from going to my competitor?” The question comes from a broadcasting mindset, because television revenue doesn’t know anything beyond reach and frequency or “gross rating points.”
The problem is that it takes a great deal more sophistication than that to produce results for advertisers online, effort that — as The Washington Post has shown — can be very, very profitable.
Register your users, because one day everybody will do it, and you certainly don’t want to be last in your market.
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Broadcasting’s blindspot: site registration
Broadcasting’s blindspot: site registration.
The Washington Post will begin a more indepth site registration process for their highly profitable washingtonpost.com Website. According to the paper, users will be asked to provide a job title, a description of their primary responsibility, the size of their company and the industry in which they work. Users will also have to provide an e-mail address and password to enter the site. The site already requires gender, age and Zip code. Users who provide Zip codes in the Washington area will also have to give their home address.
The more specific demographic information gleaned from the registrations allows media companies to charge more for advertisements targeted to the groups most likely to buy a product or service, according to online experts.“We are confident that this new registration initiative will help to continue the remarkable growth we’ve seen in ad revenue,” Caroline Little, chief executive and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.
The site had 5.1 million visitors in December, so you might be asking why they would want to mess with a successful equation? After all, aren’t some people likely to balk at the intrusion?
Newspapers are far ahead of broadcasters when it comes to understanding online customers, because their historical business model isn’t based entirely on reach and frequency. However, TV revenue is entirely built on numbers of eyeballs, albeit those within certain advertiser-friendly demographic groups. I’m opposed to subscriber fees for most news sites, because every survey I’ve seen indicates users would much rather deal with advertising than pay for content. However, contextual advertising — driven by a database — is THE revenue model for the Internet, and you can’t do that without registration. This is a blindspot that’s hard for broadcasters to get beyond. “If I force my users to register, what’s to keep them from going to my competitor?” The question comes from a broadcasting mindset, because television revenue doesn’t know anything beyond reach and frequency or “gross rating points.”
The problem is that it takes a great deal more sophistication than that to produce results for advertisers online, effort that — as The Washington Post has shown — can be very, very profitable.
Register your users, because one day everybody will do it, and you certainly don’t want to be last in your market.
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The unobvious result of the Web.
The unobvious result of the Web.
Every once in awhile, I drift away from practical advice and into a place where I express a more esoteric fascination with Postmodernism, this thing we call the Internet, and how they both relate to the future of the media. Such is the case with my latest essay, The Unobvious Result of the Web, which I’m publishing today.
An old friend and colleague of mine once wrote that he thought the language I use in many of my essays is off-putting. “Modernism, Postmodernism, Pomos, metanarratives and perspectivism… I’d like to anchor those with rocks, drop ‘em in the river, and leave them at the bottom. Is the goal to seem smart, intellectual… or to change minds?” He went on to say that the use of this language was a net liability in terms of helping my consulting business.
I know he’s right, and recent conversations with television executives have led me to the conclusion that my New Media knowledge IS extremely valuable. So why do I continue to dwell on Postmodernism?
I think the more you talk about things you don’t understand, the harder it is to be afraid of them, and frankly, there’s a lot of fear out there among my contemporaries today. I’m not suggesting we all need to become new age advocates or intellectual snobs, but naming the phantoms that are assaulting us is the first step in overcoming them. And so I embrace the terms of academic Postmodernism and apply them to life in the media. Dave Weinberger calls my work, “applied Postmodernism.” I kind of like that.
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The unobvious result of the Web.
The unobvious result of the Web.
Every once in awhile, I drift away from practical advice and into a place where I express a more esoteric fascination with Postmodernism, this thing we call the Internet, and how they both relate to the future of the media. Such is the case with my latest essay, The Unobvious Result of the Web, which I’m publishing today.
An old friend and colleague of mine once wrote that he thought the language I use in many of my essays is off-putting. “Modernism, Postmodernism, Pomos, metanarratives and perspectivism… I’d like to anchor those with rocks, drop ‘em in the river, and leave them at the bottom. Is the goal to seem smart, intellectual… or to change minds?” He went on to say that the use of this language was a net liability in terms of helping my consulting business.
I know he’s right, and recent conversations with television executives have led me to the conclusion that my New Media knowledge IS extremely valuable. So why do I continue to dwell on Postmodernism?
I think the more you talk about things you don’t understand, the harder it is to be afraid of them, and frankly, there’s a lot of fear out there among my contemporaries today. I’m not suggesting we all need to become new age advocates or intellectual snobs, but naming the phantoms that are assaulting us is the first step in overcoming them. And so I embrace the terms of academic Postmodernism and apply them to life in the media. Dave Weinberger calls my work, “applied Postmodernism.” I kind of like that.
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Nielsen: 143.6 million watched the superbowl worldwide
Nielsen: 143.6 million watched the superbowl worldwide.
That’s the number of people who were part of a cultural message from the U.S. to the rest of the world when Janet Jackson did her thing. AOL is feeling the pain. They paid $10 million to have their name linked to the halftime show, and according to a report in MediaDailyNews, they want make good ads from CBS.
AOL canceled plans to stream the halftime show to its members and to non-members through AOL.com. The plans to stream the show for what was to be nearly a two-week period would have meant a Super Bowl-level of traffic.
Here’s a great line from Mike Lupica’s column in the New York Daily News:
“This is how things go in a Paris Hilton, Madonna-kissing-Britney world. Janet Jackson is bigger than ever because she bared her right breast in front of the biggest audience of her life.”
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Nielsen: 143.6 million watched the superbowl worldwide
Nielsen: 143.6 million watched the superbowl worldwide.
That’s the number of people who were part of a cultural message from the U.S. to the rest of the world when Janet Jackson did her thing. AOL is feeling the pain. They paid $10 million to have their name linked to the halftime show, and according to a report in MediaDailyNews, they want make good ads from CBS.
AOL canceled plans to stream the halftime show to its members and to non-members through AOL.com. The plans to stream the show for what was to be nearly a two-week period would have meant a Super Bowl-level of traffic.
Here’s a great line from Mike Lupica’s column in the New York Daily News:
“This is how things go in a Paris Hilton, Madonna-kissing-Britney world. Janet Jackson is bigger than ever because she bared her right breast in front of the biggest audience of her life.”
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The end of free, over-the-air television?
The end of free, over-the-air television?
That’s one of the likely outcomes of continued audience fragmentation, according to Chicago Tribune writer, Steve Johnson, in an excellent thought piece on the subject yesterday.
…But it (fragmentation) has also brought about the tyranny of the largest minority. Because reality shows are hot right now, most networks throw them up willy-nilly, holding their noses all the way. And news, which networks used to treat more like a public trust in exchange for their licenses to operate over public airwaves, has become another profit center. Viewers bring profits, and because the people want Michael Jackson “news” more than, say, foreign trade news, they get Michael Jackson news.…And, as leaders from all aspects of television have warned, when you diminish advertising’s effectiveness you mandate that TV has to find a different way to pay for itself.
That means three likely results: the end, or shrinking, of over-the-air free TV to be replaced by much more pay-per-view; more stealth ads sneaked into the content of a show itself, like today’s product placement only more so; and, in all likelihood, probably more repeats and a greater ratio of reality schlock to carefully produced scripted fare, because the latter is so expensive to make.
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