If you’ve been following my blog for any time you have realized that I have not returned from the summer break this year. The reason is that I’m on sabbatical for the fall 2009 semester. I may still make an occasional post this fall, but my normal posting schedule will not resume until January of 2010. In the mean time I’m working on a couple of TV documentary projects and research for a book chapter. The idea of a sabbatical is to give faculty extended time outside of the classroom for travel, research, and applied scholarship. The word comes from the notion of a sabbath, or day of rest, and has been a tradition in higher ed from the earliest times. As the word suggests, faculty become eligible to apply for a sabbatical after teaching for seven years. Faculty on sabbatical are not simply given time off. They must apply with a plan for the semester or year away, and the outcome must be presented to a review committee after they return. The goal is to give the faculty member new experiences and expertise from which to draw when they return to the classroom. So far, my field work has given me plenty of new experiences and I look forward to sharing them with students when I return in January.
Modern Day Pirates Run Into Trouble
Pirates have been making a lot of headlines lately. Jack Sparrow has become a bankable asset in Hollywood. Somalian pirates have been on the prowl off the eastern coast of Africa stirring up trouble. If you’ve been watching the news you know that several Somalian pirates were dispatched last week by Navy Seal snipers. But it is the third photo of modern day pirates that is most applicable to discussions of media and society because of the issue of intellectual property (IP) rights. The pirates in the third picture are the founders of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracking website that connects file sharing parties. Recently they were convicted by a Swedish court of assisting in copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison and fined $3.6 million.
Media piracy is an ongoing problem for media companies. Music was the first media format to experience widespread piracy but movies, videogames and other media are also “shared” by both friends and strangers. People who wouldn’t think of shoplifting don’t bat an eye at the thought of downloading media without paying. Somehow the idea that media companies and content producers make plenty of money becomes justification for behavior that, despite its illegality, does not seem to be slowing.
Whether or not you view IP infringement as theft may depend on your place in the content food chain. If you’re a content producer (or hope to be one in the future) you may be more inclined to view piracy as theft. Here’s what Sir Paul McCartney had to say about the Pirate Bay verdict. Link to Sir Paul McCartney
Lessons from Columbine
Ten years ago the nation was shocked to hear that two disgruntled students had gone on a rampage at Columbine High School in Denver, Colorado. I remember turning on the TV in my classroom and watching, along with my students, as live coverage of the event played out on screen. We were transfixed by the images coming from the TV and left with questions about how this kind of tragedy could have happened in what felt like our own back yard. It was not long before TV pundits tried to answer those questions. Tales of the shooters’ affinity for Marilyn Manson’s music and Doom, the first-person shooter videogame, were first to surface. Others made comparisons to the movie Basketball Diaries starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Critics of media violence see Columbine as the inevitable outcome of a broken social system where film, television, music and videogame industries mass-produce violence-filled content that is consumed by impressionable children. Today’s children are more impressionable, they say, because they are frequently alienated by their peers and abandoned by the social institutions, e.g., family and church, that, in earlier times, provided alternative perspectives on life. They also point to the few cases of perpetrators who themselves said that they were influenced by media or by the desire to copy the behavior that they saw acted out on the news. Just last month two UK teens were arrested for plotting to bomb a school on the 10th anniversary of Columbine.
Critics of the critics counter that media exposure is an insignificant contributing factor when attempting to explain real-world violence. As evidence they like to point to all of the children that have grown up on violent cartoons, movies, videogames and music yet have never acted out in a violent manner. Some even believe that mediated violence serves as a sort of pressure valve that allows young people to blow off steam in a virtual environment. Killing a few computer-generated monsters or villains is certainly better than kicking the dog or punching a little brother.
This debate has been going on for centuries and will likely continue for years to come. But don’t let that stop you from having opinions of your own!
The State of the News Media
According to The State of the News Media, a report by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, audiences for news are shrinking and advertising revenue is falling. News magazines and newspapers have lost the most readers, followed by local and network news. On a positive note, internet and cable TV news are attracting new viewers. The down side is that internet news users are still difficult to sell to advertisers.
The other problem with internet news is that many online news outlets don’t do much if any news reporting…they simply aggregate news from various sources, e.g. Associated Press and Reuters, and bundle them for visitors to their websites. This model is unsustainable if the ones actually doing the reporting are not sharing in the revenue generated by the online advertising. As newspapers fold and reporters are laid off, there will be fewer stories available to the online portals such as Yahoo! and Google news. In some ways it mimics the change that our country has seen over recent decades. We have moved from manufacturing to a service economy. No one wants to make things anymore, and it seems that no one wants to “produce” news content. Without reporters in the field making calls, conducting interviews, showing up at events, and keeping their ears to the ground, the future of journalism looks bleak…and news organizations are scared.
So if your business model is broken and your source of income is in jeapordy, what do you do? Just last week the Associated Press (AP) announced that they would take legal action against aggregators (such as Yahoo! and Google) who use their headlines and news excerpts without paying copyright premission. While Google pays AP for full articles that it carries on the Google website, the problem pertains to Google’s, and other aggregators’, use of headlines and excerpts. News aggregators have argued Fair Use and say that they drive traffic to the AP website in return for using a short bit of the news copy. In this difficult economic climate, the battle is about power, prestige, and, ultimately, survival.
Behavioral Targeting of Gen Y
Behavioral targeting (BT) is a strategy that attempts to deliver relevant ads to internet users based on their surfing behavior. The good news for advertisers is that they can target niche audiences with a level of precision only dreamed about in years past. The good news for consumers, if there is good news, is that you should be seeing ads that are relevant to your lifestyle and preferences…and not a lot of ads that are targeting someone else. The idea is brilliant, but the practice does not appear to be living up to expectations for members of Gen Y. New research shows that young consumers notice the ads, but few find them relevant. As a result, about 36% never click on ads, and the remaining 74% click infrequently. If you’re an advertiser running an interactive (read “online”) advertising campaign, those kinds of numbers are very discouraging. But it is also possible that the survey responses don’t capture the whole truth. I suspect that most survey respondents are reluctant to admit that they sometimes respond to online ads. And of course not all online advertising requires a click…some of it is simply designed to create and impression without a call to action.
This is a privacy issue, and it involves children, so naturally the government is getting involved. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is considering recommendation of voluntary industry guidelines that would limit data collection from those under 18 for the purpose of BT.
Some researchers have suggested that Gen Y actually prefers BT and may want to send explicit messages to marketers about what kinds of products and services they would welcome. That doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time…but then I’m just a wee bit older than this demographic. What do you think? Would you welcome advertising messages that were more focused and relevant to your personal interests, or do you just want them all to go away?
Late Night with Prez Obama
Last night President Obama made history when he became the first sitting president to appear on the Tonight Show. While Washington D.C. was embroiled in the AIG bonus scandal, our Chief Executive was discussing policy, and his bowling score, with Jay Leno in Hollywood, CA. Something about it all seemed slightly unseemly and a little bit strange… as though the leader of the free world was seeking the kind of exposure that late-night TV hosts typically provide to comedians and film stars. Usually “the press” travels to DC and the White House to interview the president. There’s a certain seriousness demanded by the office and the oval office that bestows a sense of gravity to the whole affair…a gravity that is sorely lacking on late-night TV.
Some have argued that this is just the sort of relief that the American public needs when the economic hardship and the resulting rancorous debate in Washington has us all feeling slightly under the weather. According to this line of thinking, a little levity from the chief executive might provide some relief from our misery. But I suspect that Neil Postman might see it differently. Postman was a media theorist, and author of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. According to Postman, television is wholly unsuited for serious discourse and trivializes the most important of issues. Postman would not have been surprised that an American president would appear on a late-night comedy show. In fact, he would probably conclude that this was the inevitable outcome of a society preoccupied with entertainment and enraptured with celebrity. In his book Postman provides a short history of politicians intentionally presenting themselves as sources of amusement. JFK allowing the camera crew of Ed Murrow into his home, former President Richard Nixon appearing on Laugh In, former President Gerald Ford and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger taking brief roles on Dynasty, Tip O’Neill showing up on the sitcom Cheers, and Mayor Ed Koch hosting Saturday Night Live…these and other examples demonstrate that political celebrity is nothing new. President Obama’s actions simply take it to a new level.
And what is the result? Postman concluded that, “Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.” I wish he were wrong.
How to turn pro
This post continues the theme of a previous post which explored career planning in tough economic times. In this post I want to address an aspect of career planning that should start as soon as you’ve declared your major.
Have you ever heard someone say that s/he wants to turn pro? What does it take to be a professional at something…be it basketball player or TV news reporter or web designer? Besides the obvious requirements–talent, skill, and determination–professionals are different from amateurs on several levels. First, a pro is typically paid to perform his/her talent. Second, a pro is someone who performs at a higher level than amateurs.
One way to learn to perform at a higher level is what Goeff Colvin calls “deliberate practice” in his book, Talent is Overrated. According to Colvin, research shows that those who reach the top of their game get there by systematic and consistent practice of their craft, over an extended period of time.
So how does this apply to someone who wants to excel in the media industries? For starters, someone who aspires to be a pro studies professionals and their work. You can’t learn to write powerful feature stories without reading a lot of well-written feature stories. You can’t learn to direct TV programs or movies without watching quality TV programs and films, studying the techniques used by the best in the industry. You can’t write effective advertisements without reading/watching/listening to a lot of ads created by the best advertising minds in the business. In other words, succeeding in the business of media requires exposing oneself to the very best of the best, over and over again, with a critical eye/ear to learn what works and what doesn’t. On the other hand, you need to be discriminating, in the best sense of the word…selecting the best examples and minimizing your exposure to uninspired or poorly-executed work.
I’m always amazed when I ask students who have expressed an interest in working in one of the mass media industries what they’ve been reading, watching, listening to…only to find that they don’t really spend much time with the media that they want to work in some day. But remember…if you’re going to spend time with your medium of choice, make it worth your while. Search out the masters (their work may be decades old…but that’s okay) and read, watch and listen with a critical eye. I’m sure you’ll learn a few things. Oh, and if your friends invite you over to watch a movie or TV show, remember to check your critical eye at the door…they may not appreciate all of your acquired knowledge on an evening when they just want to relax and have fun!
So Long Rocky
After 150 years of publishing, and four Pulitzer Prizes, the Rocky Moutain News will publish its last paper tomorrow. Denver will become a one-newspaper-town, much like the rest of the nation, after the Rocky closes its doors. While the news of the Rocky’s demise was sudden, it was not surprising. The current economic free-fall has hammered the newspaper business, an industry that was already in severe trouble. The Rocky lost $16 million last year bringing its debt to $130 million. Nearly all advertising is down, with classified ads–an important revenue stream for newspapers–continuing to feel the negative effect of online alternatives such as Craig’s List. It’s a tough time to be in the newspaper business, and even worse for the 200 or so Rocky Mountain News staff who are now without employment.
–30–
What do you want to do when you grow up?
I had a very interesting discussion yesterday with the father of a current student. The conversation quickly turned to a discussion of employment opportunities for his son after graduation. With the economic forecast what it is, I’m surprised that more students haven’t been asking similar questions about the odds of securing a livable wage working in the media industry. Believe me, salary has never been the primary motivator for mass comm students. If it were, they’d have changed their major to business or pre-med long ago.
As mass comm faculty here at CSU-Pueblo we feel an obligation to make this clear to new students who often show up expecting to land a major-market anchor position with a six-figure salary soon after graduation. Before they get out of the introductory courses, mass comm students know that earning potential takes a back seat to “opportunities for creative expression” when it comes to the benefits of working in the media industries. While every sector is affected by the slowdown, the media industries are feeling the pinch because of their reliance on advertising revenue. There’s very little good news coming out of that department and even less hope for a quick turn-around.
But enough gloom and doom. What can you do if you’re a couple of semesters away from graduation and the proverbial “real world?” For starters, be proactive. This is a competitive industry and opportunities have to be hunted down, lassoed and hog-tied (my apologies to those of you on the rodeo team). Start networking now, and don’t be timid about it. Sell yourself to everyone on every occasion, even your current classmates. They may be in a position to recommend you for a position if they get hired before you do. Don’t burn bridges by letting petty arguments ruin relationships. Volunteer and intern as soon, and as often, as you can.
I know you’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating…manage your online presence. Create a LinkedIn profile for your business networking and make sure that your MySpace and Facebook profiles don’t “undo” the professional image that you’re working to create. A few months ago I was contacted out of the blue by a guy wanting to sell some used professional video gear. I “Googled” his name and company, and the first webpage I found contained a picture of him throwing up into a toilet in a public restroom…no exactly a reassuring image. The only thing worse might have been a mug shot or warrant for his arrest on embezzlement charges!
I would also recommend that you keep your skills honed and polished. Want to write for a print or online publication? Write every day…and put it out there for public consumption and criticism. If you want to be a writer, you should have your own blog or website and be self-publishing now…not waiting until you graduate. Want to be radio or television talent? Work on the Rev or for KTSC-TV or CNM Production Works. Borrow a video camera and shoot and edit stories on a regular schedule, all year long…not just for assigned class projects. Do you want to work in promotions or advertising? Find something that needs to be promoted or advertised and work up a campaign. And don’t forget software competencies. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign…mastery of any or all of these apps will make you more marketable. If you want to work in design, push yourself to learn Flash or After Effects. The software is available in our BCC lab and there are books and websites that will provide all the information you need. All you have to bring to the mix is the desire.
And remember, just because you’re enrolled in classes doesn’t mean that you have to wait for your professors to assign projects. Push yourself and develop a work ethic that sets you apart from your competition. Prospective employers will take note and it will make a difference when it comes to filling the position.
If you learn to market yourself, to sell your talents, and to delivery high-quality media content on deadline you will have something that employers want, even in a down economy. And perhaps even better, you’ll have what you need to start your own business and be your own boss. If this sounds like too much work, then you don’t want it bad enough and you ought to consider changing your major to accounting. With the amount of money that will be spent by government in the coming years, there will be plenty of jobs for accountants!
In closing I should mention the other alternative (besides moving back in with mom and dad). Perhaps you should consider graduate school. Earning an MA or MS degree will put you into the next tier and narrow the competition. If you have the grades, and the intellectual curiosity that grad school requires, give it some thought. You won’t be the first person to ride out a down market by spending the time adding another level of education and expertise.
$6 Billion for Broadband in Obama’s Stimulus Package
One of the first tasks for the new administration is to propose and pass a stimulus package to kick-start the ailing economy. One small part of the package currently being proposed is about $6,000,000,000 for broadband internet service, particularly for the 7-8% of Americans living in rural and underserved areas where broadband is unavailable and dial-up connections provide only 56 kbps. The US has already fallen behind the developed world and stands at 15th in terms of number of broadband subscribers per 100 residents. According to a recent report, this is critically important because broadband creates jobs. According to the Brookings Institution, for every percentage point increase in broadband adoption, approximately 293,000 jobs are added.
Not only are we lagging behind in the global race for connectivity, our broadband connections are often much slower than what is available in other countries. According to one report, the median download speed in the U.S. is 2.35 Mbps. Compare that to Japan whose median speed is an amazing 63.60 Mbps. And while fiber optic to the home (FTTH) is one approach to increasing bandwidth, new technologies in the works for cable modems offer great promise at much lower cost. Using a technology called Docsis 3, several cable TV channels can be combined to offer Internet service approaching 1 gigabit per second. At that speed you could download a two hour Hollywood movie in well under a minute. But while entertainment media is the driving force behind broadband adoption, the stakes are high for less exciting, but more important tasks. Telemedicine, better access to online education and telecommuting are clear benefits that stimulate the economy when high-speed connectivity is universally available.
One last related issue is the battle over network neutrality. This is the idea that digital data delivered over public and private networks should not be restricted, regulated or controlled except those controls that address legal issues such as copyright infringement and other illegal actions. It is very possible that this $6 billion infusion will come with requirements that the major telecommunications businesses that own the fiber optic networks, and ISPs, practice net neutrality.
