Rethinking Old Ideas and Assumptions Pt.2 The Possible Newspaper Futures
The year is clicking over to 2021 and one can imagine future outcomes for the newspaper business (NPB). If you say the NPB isn't going anywhere, that is both a probable and a likely outcome. A best possible outcome is also in the cards putting the NPB in an upward trajectory. It is all about vision.
One thing that is overlooked is the infrastructure of Canadian newspapers located from coast to coast. What if all newspapers cooperated in one area, for example culture. This would mean creating reporting on the vastness and depth of Canadian culture without the usual filters in a way never possible before. In a way only online technology could achieve. It could be contribution of words both non-fiction and fiction, poetry, prose, facts and art,still pictures and videos. This would be conceived in all six directions (east, west, north south, up and down fallowing the sun on a daily direction.
This is something best kept simple. Survey local fashion, art, and design as well as what is on the minds of people across the country in random but concerted wave. These are the things people most care about in a personal way, everything else flows from that. As a news photographer driving the streets of Winnipeg, new trends become apparent with those one or two people walking down the street ,they stand out. The message spreads and trends originate. It almost always with the young and brave. These are not followers but unintentional leaders in the truest sense. We once had a reporter who walked the streets looking for these outliers.
It is conceivable the Heritage department of the federal government might want to support the project. Anyway it would be a way to scale up the local NPB in away it can make money the way websites traditionally do. A short tradition. This can be Canadians speaking to each other in a direct way.
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There was a good debate going on with BBC HARDtalk host Steven SackThis is something best kept simple. ur and Newsmax (NMX) CEO Chris Ruddy. My thought first thought was old school vs upstart. But it really feels like Old Testament vs New Testament media. Old Testament,established, an eye for an eye, inflexible, arrogant, traditional and guided by many rules both written and unwritten. The New Testament, new, unformed, confident, flexible, anything goes, forgiving, appealing to those who have seen the old as just old. The BBC World News is not a typical cable news channel, it feels like a newspaper and even has a time slot called The Papers that looks at newspaper front pages from around the world on a daily basis. The BBC news feels much like the news of the 1970's and 80's,purposely dull, definitive and low key.
The BBC news, at it's core the best of news telling in a 1960's -1970's way. North American news has a 90's feel with a 1979 peak Disco DNA vibe mixed in. Disco,the predominantly white, heterosexual, urban middle class and disposable, shaken not stirred progressive openness. It's a lot about a look,but not in a visual way. More of an accessory, the disco ball is transformed into moving background colors and shapes, tickers, adorning commentators and news readers. A touch of colonialism, capitalism and elitism hovering in control of the space.
In the newspaper business we bring the readers the problems when the readers are looking for answers.
The fully formed and mature newspaper business knew the white Anglo Saxon demographic, they grew to know the boomers,but they are now once again searching. Fleet Street-er's knew the levers to pull and the valves to turn in the newspapers business because they knew the word/press culture. They knew the Anglo Saxon reader. They knew the mechanics of an industrial aged medium and industrial workers.
The online product brings new and diverse people into the newspaper tent. As they gain confidence the content and courage will grow. It doesn't need perfection nor should it be sought.
Social media is moving ,Twitter may be replaced by a more aggressive Parler. This is a business of building, tearing down and rebuilding with ever increasing speed. It is technology speeding toward artificial intelligence, a science fiction future.
In a recent BBC HARDtalk interview between host Steven Sackur and Newsmax (NMX) CEO Chris Ruddy regarding Joe Biden's election certification. The new conservative voice NMX waited till the election was officially certified. The debate was a good match up of journalism past (aggressive and prepared tabloid interview, with ,I am right, I am always right, attitude) and a start up, a fast growing online news organization , aggressively and equally prepared. Sackur slightly confuses and frustrated by Ruddy, knows his advantage is slipping , he says, “I think very hard about who we bring on HARDtalk, who we give a platform to, and what kind of messages it sends.”The debate moved to some hard pivots about Twitter posts and ended in a draw favoring Ruddy who lost a point on a poor phrase use.
Ruddy knows his medium, Sackur knows his. The BBC wins and it's viewers win. Online information media is formidable and growing.
A new and growing news product, is it a threat? Who knows? New and growing is actually a bigger point of interest. It is knowing about the levers and modifying the product to the technology not the opposite.
I immediately thought of an exchange on CNN in the days after the shocking 2016 Presidential Election after a crestfallen CNN host said they didn't see it coming. The aspirations of the first female president and again faulty polling betrayed bias. Progressive hope over substance. The person he was talking to said, there were people who were predicting the Trump win , but you would never see them on CNN. Bias is in the selection of content.
This,for me was an aha moment. It is the systemic bias of journalism. Modern journalism picks sides. It's core values line up with aspirations and objectivity blurred. The public begins to separate, news becomes suspect along political lines. These moments can be exploited. These moments should never exist.
It showed again in the prime time commentary after the first Trump/Biden Debate. A visibly upset senior CNN reporter called Trumps performance a “Sh/t Show,”and other CNN senior reporter was practically in tears over the debate. Crying for democracy. Not sure if anyone at the BBC would be crying on the air. The debate was not pretty and by any other standard should have lost the election for Trump with a resignation right there. Even though he did lose, he gained about eleven million votes more than he won with in 2016. In England they call it brass. The deplorables came out in droves for both sides. Democracy in action.
Newsmax was launched in 1998 and is considered an influential American conservative media that is positioning itself to compete with FOX News Channel started in 1996 by Rupert Murdoch as a conservative news channel. By 201l (2014 TV channel)it was the top rated news channel with 2.5 million viewers. NM has a pretty interesting origin story of it's own and recent history with Trump moving toward the website after seemly abandoning Fox. The future may have close connections with Donald Trumps post presidency years. In the US there was a need for conservative ideas in media and Fox and now Newsmax is there to fill it. In Canada, not so much, but there are need to be filled at progressive ideals fail to produce results. The optimistic ideas that more money and ten years are falling flat with those last twenty years producing very slow moving results. Canada's position in the world post 9/11 soft power is slipping, with the United Nations , India, Saudi Arabia, China and the Philippines. Canada needs to rethink it's projection of soft power. The NPB has a roll to play in this future also.
There was not a lot of competition for conservative leaning news on 1990's TV. Anyway the NM website is growing and catering to higher income Boomers, and those over the age of 45, with 54.7 average age. It sells political, financial, health,self help books and vitamins. There have been a few stories about the NM website and it is listed with credible conservative competitors in that space. It does publish conspiracy theories. Interesting fact the family of the late former CIA director William Casey where among the early investors of Newsmax. With newspapers in mind that demographic would be older in any given year although it aspires to a much lower aged group.
It seems to me a newspaper should display conspiracy theories on a regular basis. Boomers were raised with them. I don't think anyone took them seriously because real stories with facts dogged them. There is some truth to every theory. If people are interested in conspiracies then newspapers should be to. Sometimes conspiracy theories are just imaginative entertainment, they are easy to remember, and good water cooler talk. If they exist only in un-monitiored uncontested space they can much more dangerous, repeated and becomes half truths.
Conspiracy theories are part of human nature, this is were governments and newspapers and TV are failing. Never, never say the conspiracy is untrue because “there is NO evidence to back it up.” It makes them more determined. It is a word trap used by lawyers. I have heard conspiracy theories working everyday from editors, they are called story ideas not written yet. Unsubstantiated claims uses two credible ideas to debunk falsehoods.
From my time in the business, the NPB had always aspired to a group it would never get, 18-35,especially with the rise of online competition of all forms.
Interestingly, the big new for-profit churches also capture the same demographic as Newsmax. Guilt free acceptance of wealth has an attraction in that circle.
Guilt and shaming play an increasing roll in progressive media. Progressive ideals are breaking down with the realization of the negative effects of globalism. It is bullying in it's saddest incarnation. That is not a role for journalism,but by the same token neither are conspiracy theories., or political speculation based on some issues (fear) taken to worst case scenarios and others (progressive add money and ten years)to dizzying positive potentials of problems that have been chronically dismal for the last few decades and getting worse. It is simply projecting bias , evoking unrealistic future fear that should not exist and enriching departments that administered taxpayer money.
With Covid and climate change,the same question is faced, economics vs THE ISSUE.
The way it looks, is that Newsmax knows it's place in the online space just as publicly financed BBC knows it's place. The current place newspapers hold is getting technology to adapt to it. In technology based media,media adapts to technology seeking more intense and enhanced media. The newspaper way promotes NPB changing every little as technology runs forward. The NPB is the perfect product, it right, it is always right and perfect. This is the modern Catch 22 of heritage media.
Is there anything the newspaper business can learn? Opinion by Ken Gigliotti
Topic: Happy New Year-Rethinking Old Ideas and Assumptions Pt.2 (Read 1264 times)