According to Wired Magazine, the average American spends 8 to 9 hours a day in front of a screen. Based on the premise that information consumption should be as healthy as food consumption, the magazine suggests this as a ‘balanced diet’ in this information-overload age:
Now, I’m reasonably media-savvy, and the very existence of this blog indicates how much I’ve embraced Web 2.0. But there’s one thing about the research findings and the pyramid that has me perplexed:
What’s happened to work?
Popularity: 8% [?]
“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consistent of believing, or in disbelieving; it consists of professing to believe what he does not believe.” Thomas Paine
It is Sunday morning. Ben and I sit in the kitchen. I skim the pages of a broadsheet, while my 13 year-old son reads one of yesterday’s supplements; he’s found a review of a new X-box game that, at a guess, involves disembowelling vampires.
BEN: That’s really cool.
ME (not looking up from the Arts section): Have you played it?
BEN: No. But it’s got 5 stars in here.
ME (wondering about getting tickets for the new ‘Godot’): And that makes it ‘cool’ does it, because it says so in there?
BEN: Well, it’s why we buy the big papers, isn’t it?
And I realise that I am at one of life’s key parental conversations. We’ve talked about sex, about bullying, about drugs. Now it’s ‘truth’ in the press.
M: How do you think a newspaper makes money, Ben? Where does my £1.50 actually go?
B: The paper shop?
M: Yes – to Mr Singh, and to the distributor who delivers the papers to the shop each morning. By the time they’ve taken their cut, it doesn’t leave very much for the people who make the papers. So how does a newspaper make its money?
We pause. Ben flicks a page or two, looking for a picture of a hole to crawl into.
All he can find is listings for London cinemas.
B: Advertising.
M: Spot on. The newspapers sell space to companies who want to sell things to their readers. No advertising, no newspapers. So the first thing to remember about newspapers is that their business purpose isn’t to print news. It’s to generate advertising revenue.
B: Cool. So why do newspapers write all this sort of stuff? (He points at a feature about a soap actress in the ‘Property’ section.) Why not just run ads?
M: Because too much advertising wouldn’t be very interesting, then no one would buy the paper. That’s the publisher’s dilemma. It’s a question of balance.
B: So get more journalists writing more stories.
M: Well, that’s good for you as a reader, but not good for the publisher as a business. That’s more cost.
B: But there’s loads of writing in these papers, pages and pages of news.
M: Is there? What is ‘news’, Ben?
B: Um…Stories about things that happen in the world. Gaza and the Credit crunch and things like that.
M: And all the sections of this newspaper are full of that, are they?
B: Well, no. Looking at this part (the listings insert he has in front of him), it’s got records and dvds and films and stuff.
M: A famous newspaper publisher called Randolph Hearst once said: “News is something that somebody, somewhere doesn’t want to see in print. Everything else is publicity.”
B: So what’s this? (He points to the soapstar ‘profile’).
M: Read the final paragraph – the bit in italics.
B: “The Notting Hill flat is on the market for £675,000 with Foxtons”
He stops and smiles. A penny drops, and for the next few minutes he’s ploughing through pages of newsprint, looking for publicity stories: a disgraced MP and his new book; a glamour model and her new TV series.
B: Jokes! (it’s a different language, but I’m keeping up) It’s all Publicity! All of it!
M: Well, not quite ALL. But most of it is. And the reason is simple – it’s cheaper than news. News takes time to research, time to collate, time to write, time to check. And as the businessman running the newspaper, you want to cut your costs – but you need to keep the amount of editorial content, because your readers demand it.
B: So make the journalists work harder.
M: Going to be a media mogul when you grow up? Despite the stereotype, most journalists and editors are incredibly productive. But when the advertising people sell more space, it creates a need for more editorial to keep that balance. So it becomes very tempting to use packaged material from publicists and agents and PRs, who are being paid for by someone else.
B: So the editor can fill more space, while the publisher keeps his costs down. Cool. So is this publicity?
He has found a ‘car of the year’ piece by Jeremy Clarkson. To a teenage would-be petrol-head, Clarkson is a deity.
M: Well, it has no news value, but it isn’t promoting anything in particular. So we’ll call it Entertainment – one of the main reasons people chose their Sunday paper.
B: So what about all this (he points back at the cinema listings).
M: That’s the fifth type on content. That’s Information; helpful facts to help you make decisions. You’ll find a lot of those in the Sundays, especially in the Travel sections.
B: News. Advertising. Publicity. Entertainment. Information. Is that it?
M: Pretty much. It’s a good filter to apply each time you read the paper – especially to weed out the PR man’s dream – Publicity that’s being presented as News. Put it in another order, and it spells PAINE.
B ??
M : Thomas Paine was a man who lived round the time of the American and French Revolutions. He wrote a couple of very famous books, The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason. He was quite complicated, and no friend of the Church or the English Government, but all you need to remember is his basic philosophy – we should each think for ourselves. So when you read the paper, and to make sure you read with a questioning mind, remember PAINE. Think for yourself, not the way that others want you to think.
Fatherly advice duly dispensed, I head for a morning shower. Twenty minutes later, Ben is standing in the bedroom door.
B: I looked up Paine on the web. He might have written those books, but he died in poverty and no one went to his funeral.
M : Yes, well, ermm…
B : I bet the man who publishes the Sunday paper won’t die poor.
M : Probably not.
B : Although all that stuff we talked about, that’s on the internet for free. So ‘praps he will.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Second Thoughts