The Friday Spicy: Three Questions About This Week in Journalism that ONLY an Academic Will Ask
It’s week seven! of this ongoing but brief media critique of the questions that didn’t get asked by the people best empowered to ask them: those with regular gigs at news orgs with the huge platforms from which to scale their arguments. I can’t remember a bigger week of media news in a while. Glad it came the second week of school…
In this: 1) Why have journalists so become the story (this week highlights this)? What stories are being missed? 2) There has been some bad news about the Village Voice, the Outline, and beyond. Can alternative revenue streams really work? 3) Just how amazing is Serena, and can we get more women’s news?
1. The New York Times op-ed and The New Yorker Festival have to make us pause and ask: What happened to the cardinal rule journalists follow? You are not the story…
As a professor, I’m on the research not practice side, but I do try to make my students think critically about how what they do fits into a larger tradition of media critique and normative presumptions about democracy. The media has become the story, whether it’s about Trump or trust or whether this op-ed should or should not have been published or whether Bannon should or should not appear. My dear journalist friends, the only people who care as much about you is you — there are btw, massive floods happening in Wisconsin and Minnesota and other parts of the ahem *midwest* including in Madison, Wisconsin. San Antonio, Texas, where in Texas, all eyes are on Beto O’Rourke, yeah, their have been scary flash floods there, too (2–5 inches on Tuesday). You know when Ironman thinks about canceling a swim it’s big, but in more seriousness, these floods are catastrophic and that’s a story, news media, not you.The only reason I have some sense of this: friends who live in these places. Let’s really really think about what matters: maybe some questions about climate change this week, not who is the present-day Mark Felt?
2. What does this week’s media news tell us about the problems of alternative business models?
How much of The New Yorker Festival was about filthy lucre versus conversation? Does The Outline’s shutdown of editorial show that selling weed containers and t-shirts is not a successful business strategy? How could the Village Voice fail if brands matter? Or Playboy for that matter? My contention is that events now have to be events people want to show up with, rife with the dork drama of spectacle that include an invitation to the most hated man in liberal America other than Trump, Steve Bannon. Events must be spectacle to be sellable; the Texas Tribune knows that to be and to be seen at its festival is to profit. The New Yorker knows this too, especially since cut subscription deals on print are a devil’s bargain for any magazine (scale is good, too much scale costs to much). The New Yorker Festival is about the bottom line; all attention on it is good attention for it if people are talking. But is this Bannon the standard that has to be reached for events to really break through and get people fired up — to then go and pay? Looking to The Outline, which had excellent writing and excellent native advertising and a sweet store filled with original stuff for sale (as I wrote about in CJR) — and some very smart but controversial leadership (not to mention some excellent braggadocio) — I had bets on this one that it would maybe be acquired, actually, by a Buzzfeed or Vox-type outlet. Nope, “it gone,” mostly. And goodness gracious, if there was not a more iconic brand than The Village Voice in all of alternative journalism, then I’m not sure what to say. What happened to The Voice? I would have gone to any number of Voice festivals or concerts or theater production — and maybe The New York City of today is sterile and Disney-fied, but I fail to believe that it has lost its underlying ethos as a city of imaginative dreamers, and The Voice melted away in this milieu. How did the news industry just make every possible fail when it came to advertising? What do we say when iconic brands melt?As a side note to xi, too, is cutting to four issues a week, and on occasion a glossy and highbrow porn mag has got to make it into the mix of your magazine reading, no? Can Playboy survive or did Hugh Hefner (#ILLINI alum)just have too much fun in that mansion?
3. Has there ever been anyone better at tennis than Serena Williams? Can we get more coverage of women’s sports?
The US Open has this awesome melon-ball drink thing and I think more journalists could use said melon-ball drinks, this week.
I was at the US Open, and one must ask, why did Serena not get her due until, well, she basically was playing pregnant? Why did it take till the twilight of her career for an HBO series? Implicit bias, or explicit bias? Why has it taken so long to embrace her strong is sexy body? Worth asking, and at least it has been corrected, and she is Queen Serena…
This why question is worth asking — there was no non-streaming TV coverage in the US of the renegade and rebellious and profoundly unequal Women’s Tour de France. WNBA could stand to get some games on actual ESPN rather than Canadian Football (or is that just Midwest ESPN?) In the era of #metoo, can the media do better at recognizing the badass strong ladies of sport that set the examples for what it means to be a hero for women and break boundaries? I think so.
No bonus today, but happy Friday and for those who celebrate, a restful and sweet New Year.
