On Why I Can’t Wait For The News Industry To Die (78 of 90)
The last two years have been instructive for me professionally.
When I began working on The Cult of Me, I had every intention of writing a book about how the news industry could save itself from implosion. I thought it a worthy cause, one that I’d spend the better part of the last decade working towards. My experience on both the tech side and the reporting and editing side, my managerial experience, my love of telling stories. I thought this would be welcomed within my industry.
Turns out it wasn’t.
The anger, hostility and outright ignorance about emerging technologies, digital storytelling and networked communities astounded me. Everywhere I went, I was constantly made to feel as though the world that I worked in – this digital metaverse – was at very best second-tiered in terms of importance.
The language used – and oh, those arrogant journalists who cling to the assaults upon their language and yet use words so loosely – was horrific and off-putting, although I’m certain not always intentionally so.
Eventually, the fight with traditional journalists, the ones who clung to their typewriters and religion, became one I no longer cared to have. One I no longer needed to have. Time would take care of them. Business models would wash them away, eroding the righteous indignation away.
I left for more hallowed grounds, away from the chaos.
***
In 1994, my first job was a news aide at Citybeat, a local weekly in Cincinnati. I love the paper even today although my relations there have long been severed.
Still, the editor there helped launch my career (and truth be told, he helped launch the career of David Pescovitz, Boing Boing contributor and all-around badass dude).
However, I didn’t work for that editor. I worked for someone else. And it was with her that I experienced my first bit of irrationality.
Every day, I was given information to look up at the library, research for stories the news desk was working. I would trudge over to the library, go into the MicroFilm section and make copies of stories from papers. Except I didn’t really need to do that. I could actually dial into the library from my computer, search through the archives and find many of the articles online. (Or, you know, whatever we called “online” back in 1994.)
I tried to explain this process to the boss. To no avail. I needed to trudge my ass over to the library. In person. Every day.
Why? I assume because that is what she did. She never explained it to me. Didn’t need to. She was the boss.
I quit that job after 5 months.
***
I’ve written about other slights in the industry, ones that baffles a technologist.
I, for the most part, no longer engage with most journalists. Not on this subject. Because they are unable to separate the experience and knowledge of technologists from the uninformed opinions of non-technologists. Because they are unable to put together large budgets or developed business plans and yet believe they have insight into developing businesses.
They act in ways that, would they be covering themselves, would not play out very well on the front pages of the very papers they write.
***
I disengage almost immediately when I speak to people about emerging business models, technology and story because the lack of knowledge and expertise (e.g. the historical understanding of the papers, the models and the architectures that have worked over the years, that drive the industry) is not something that is just a few years old.
When I hear people say (as I used to say): “Hey, the Web is only 15 years old, you’re not that far behind,” I want to scream: “Yes, but if you think this is about the Web, then you absolutely have no idea what you are talking about so stop. Please. Now.”
If you don’t know The Well, or the Taxonomy of Players, or Man-Computer Symbiosis, or As We May Think, or the Hacker Ethic, or Geeks or QuantumLink or any number of other pieces of vital information that help us understand how the digital, networked world operated today, then it’s hard for me to take you seriously when you begin talking about “the way things are.”
If you cling to pulped trees and ink as a standard and don’t realize the ridiculous nature of this belief, I will not take you seriously. If you think email is a Web application, I’m going to have a difficult time discussing the future of technology with you. If you believe standards and protocolos and database structures aren’t important enough to hash out, we can’t talk about the future of business models. If you can’t grok why Apple’s business model is an epic disaster for any publishing organization that hopes to reach a mass audience, I’ve got little interesting in teaching you.
If you think selling the community means making a t-shirt or getting people to pay for your news article, you have truly missed the idea of participatory culture and you should fade into obscurity. If you think interactivity is making people push buttons to get through your story, you don’t understand the fundamentals of the Web.
***
Of course, you’ll notice I said nothing about the news. I love the news. The news is important. Journalists aren’t. News organizations aren’t.
This country was built upon industries dying and new industries rising. This will happen again. I don’t fear for democracy. I don’t live in a state of fear, one where I demand that whatever skill set I have today be preserved at any cost for tomorrow.
We are humans. We evolve in a brutal eco-system meant to kill us.
I look forward to the news industry dying.
