The E-limination series: Print, the new undead?

(Part 1 of 3)

Sorry, what was that? Really? I didn’t think I’d see anyone ’round these parts anymore. You know, around actual newspapers. Yeah? Well, I didn’t think anyone still did that these days. You know — read.

Nowadays, it’s all about the skim. I mean, you don’t go out of your way to drive to a bookstore, shell out P20 on that visually appetizing mock-tabloid, and digest all 20-something pages of it, word for word, including some washed-up singer’s column — all nine-or-so paragraphs about the day she visited some washed-up actress’ home. Why do that when your blog buffet’s always laid out for you, nice and hot? An expansive variety of dish replenished regularly. Eat all you can. No need to finish everything on your plate.

Besides, who needs issues when you’re fed constantly by an RSS feed? Why plod through articles when you can breeze through easy entries? What are journalists for when all the foodies, fashionistas, bored but cultivated housewives, and regular Joes-in-the-know of the world have the power to give their honest opinions on, well, pretty much everything. Armed with a camera and a lot of free time, a concerned citizen can become a political pundit; a 13-year-old with a start-up sense of style gets a front-row seat at Fashion Week; a star-glazing gossip gay becomes a star himself. Or a commentator on couture — whatever Perez Hilton says he wants to be.

Dis-Content Is King

When even the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., likened print to the Titanic, you just knew that the people who called themselves journalists would feel like they’d just slid off the ship’s deck, holding on to whatever they could as they peered through the chaos for a lifeboat they could swim to.

These boats could have just as well been blogs. After all, everyone and their Lola Techies were already driving daily on the information highway, following their own itinerary of stops along it. Subscribe to your blogs via Google Reader and you’re practically teleporting: Vulture for cultural news bites served with Noo Yawk zing, Luxist for the latest spending musts to complement the life you’ll never lead, and back to whichever blog had just joyously clicked on Publish. All without having to grapple with hefty pages of newsprint or get ink dust on the pads of your fingers.

It wasn’t that content on blogs was better, no. I refuse to think that the crap Gwyneth Paltrow preaches about on her appropriately named blog Goop is any sort of end-all, be-all on better living. It was just that it was there. That ol’ media axiom that “Content is king” had been succeeded by the royal rule of convenience.

Media And Its Median

So, what now, as we celebrate the 18th birthday of the phrase “surfing the Internet” (June, ’92)? At a time when Bryan Boy’s glitter threatens to sprinkle across Anna Wintour’s front-row center space? When Rolling Stone has become more stone-age music journalism and the Vimeo-backed, mp3-strapped music blog of some kid in Singapore is what truly rolls with the times?

The Titanic we know as print is sinking, yes, but like a comforting captain to a crew that might soon perish, Sulzberger Jr. did mention the possibility of an afterlife. “Even if the Titanic came in safely to New York harbor, it was still doomed. Twelve years earlier, two brothers invented the airplane,” he told New York magazine’s Daily Intel late last year, amid continuous layoffs at the Times. “The industry is in the midst of a massive transition. But the core of the fundamental job is critical. We have to re-create ourselves, but the heart of what we’re going to re-create is still journalism.”     

Eventually, old media will have to stop being that embittered old drunk yelling outside the party everyone else was invited to. He’ll have to knock humbly on the door and learn to be the most upstanding guy in the room again. Balanced, objective, responsible — all the traits that everyone loved about him in the first place. What’s more, he’ll charm the pants off of new media. “Hey, we’ve got the same ills,” he’ll tell her. “Stories can be sold for swag, yes, and I’ll match my self-absorbed columnist with your self-important blogger.” 

Soon, I hope, both old and new media will evolve into a better, bolder media: the substance of the old with the savvy of the new; the authority of the former with the accessibility of the latter; and people learning to distinguish between the utterances of a mob and mobile content that is both thoughtful and edited.

Maybe after the novelty of a realm where everyone’s a critic and everybody can be somebody (through virulent self-promotion, that is) has worn off, people will learn to evaluate content. And hey, they might even learn to read again.     

Fly Like Paper, Get High Like Planes …

While we’re nearing a blog burnout towards the self-promoting, multi-specializing (see Perez Hilton, “fashion journalist”) Web masses, here are a few possibilities of how print — or an evolution of it — may be kept in print.    

E-Readers

The Kindle may just rekindle a penchant for newspaper perusal. Actually, whether it’s on the awkwardly named iPad or a dual-screen enTourage eDGe, it’s about time the official and modern publication got an official outlet. 

2D Today

“We might be living in a world very soon where there is electronic paper,” Newsweek editor John Meacham told Daily Intel, explaining that the digital word would evolve like how mobile music did, from the Sony Walkman to the iPod. In that case, the “augmented reality” Esquire used in its December ’09 issue is like the circa-’89 Walkman with a remote control. Hold an AR-marked page up to a webcam, and, voilà, the feature comes alive on your screen — coverdude Downey as your puppet, maybe, or you controlling the elements and ensembles on a fashion spread with Jeremy Renner. And in February, Details is using 2D barcode technology to link bonus content to your smart phone. Who said tech couldn’t live in harmony with tradition?

The “Online Newsstand”

Print has to get friendlier with the Web. What better way to do that than with a one-stop online shop for digital content, which, according to the New York Times, prime publishers Time Inc. and Condé Nast are collaborating on.

You, Reading This Online

Glad you still make time for a quality read (come on, let me have that one). It’s different when you’re actually holding the article, I know, but soon, the full reading experience might just be a possibility even without paper. 

* * *

Next week: “How life online turned nightlife off,” 2nd installment of the E-limination series.