Pen Licence

For the first time since high school I’ve tried to start regularly handwriting again. I like the way it feels more pure and direct, with no chance to backspace and rewrite. The action of handwriting is smoother and less mechanical than typing. I like the way that it’s an uninterrupted conduit between my head, my arm and the page: the act of writing becomes a real, physical thing. Feeding words into a computer can feel formless and inconsequential—a 2000 word document takes up virtually the same amount of space as a 200 word one—whereas the exercise book I’m writing in is slowly being filled by words, by ink. The words I handwrite have weight and texture; I can run my hand over the page and feel the indentations of the pen marks.

And the words are unmistakeably mine—my handwriting may be messy but generally it’s legible (at least to me). And the pen itself and the type of book aren’t important—there’s actually something kind of satisfying about using inexpensive implements to create something that has more worth (well, hopefully) than what was used to bring it into existence.

I presume that I type faster than I handwrite, but my thoughts don’t really lose pace with my hand as I thought they might when handwriting. Rather the words seem to be stored in my head and as I write they form on the page while my brain remains a couple of words in front. A bit like breathing, it becomes difficult if you over think this process; you sort of just have to let it happen. I learned yesterday that the eye actually skims ahead while reading, so that if the light was suddenly switched off the brain knows the next couple of words ahead of the one that it is ostensibly ‘focused’ on. I presume something similar occurs when writing.

The above is a pic of the first draft of this post as it appears in my exercise book. It’s kind of strange to stop and think about the huge difference between those words appearing on a page in a notebook, which is personal and private, and then seeing those words (or at least a version of those words) up on the most public and pervasive sphere in existence—not that the fact it appears now online necessarily means that it will be read by any greater number of people. But the fact I post this means I am accepting of the possibility that someone may read these words, whereas when I’m handwriting there is a fairly implicit knowledge that nobody will see it (when I was writing initially I didn’t have the idea to put the picture online, thus I was certain that the words on the page would remain private). In some ways it’s a shame that novels etc. are not presented as handwritten manuscripts, because while fonts can be wonderfully emotive they are a barrier between the writer and reader—an extra layer that must be navigated and interpreted.

This may be why I find it so intriguing to see an author’s handwritten notes on pages—it is as if I’ve been invited to a greater level of intimacy with that writer. Indeed, handwritten notes are intimate even if not from ‘famous’ people, e.g. birthday cards or postcards. Handwritten words approximate something much closer to ‘thought’ rather than writing: most people’s handwriting is scrawling and imperfect, arguably like the nature of thought itself. It retains an ‘immediate’ or ‘fresh’ quality, direct from the source. Furthermore, handwriting is always unique—typed letters rob individual writers and their thoughts of their personal nature. Is this loss of personality in handwriting something we don’t miss anymore simply because we’re so used to typed characters? Style and voice still count for a lot, of course—good writers have personality and presence even when working in Courier. But the barrier remains, and perhaps deprives us of a deeper, more biological (even biomechanical?) connection with the writer that only handwriting can provide. 

MSN Messenger

Long before it became fashionable for opinion columnists and old people to frequently wonder if the current generation was going to hell in a handbasket due to their over-reliance on social media (seen in every major newspaper editorial section from roughly 2006 onwards), a group of savvy teenagers were already part of a social networking phenomenon – MSN Messenger. I was having a drink with a group of friends the other night and we were reminiscing about the hours spent online chatting idly to friends. In a fit of inspiration a couple of us logged in to our old accounts, only to find that the rich online community of our time had become a ghost town, populated only by sassy spam-bots and tumbleweed drifting by.

In George Lucas’ 1973 film American Graffiti (surely the most important movie Lucas would make that decade) he portrays the American youth-culture of the early 1960s: t-shirt wearing, rocknroll listening, hair-slicked adolescents with nothing better to do after school than hop in their hotted-up cars and cruise the streets of California looking for something – anything – to do. While lacking hot-rods and the upbeat, good-time rock of Buddy Holly or the Beach Boys, my generation experienced something similar. Coming home from school, we’d rush for our computers and log on to MSN Messenger, our online mass-communication network of choice. I’m guessing anyone born from 1985-1995 probably was a heavy user of MSN from around 2000-2007, the period in which most of that generation were teenagers and ‘Facebook’ was a word that described what school bullies did to over-enthusiastic nerds.

I was born in 1990 and a heavy user of the program from roughly 2002 – 2007, logging in most days for an hour or more. I don’t remember much about signing up but I do vaguely recall seeing my sister using the service and getting her to help me set up a Hotmail account so I could join in the fun. The various Hotmail addresses that we all dreamed up were quite special in their own right; mine was black_betty411@hotmail.com. I remember thinking I was desperately cool to have such an obscure, old rock song as my username until Spiderbait came out about a year later and flooded the charts with their good, but ultimately inferior, cover version.

As with most activities undertaken by teenagers, many adults couldn’t see the point. ‘You’ve spent all day seeing these people at school, what do you talk about?’ To be honest, I couldn’t answer then and I can’t answer now. All sorts of things that occupy fifteen year old minds, I suppose; school gossip, television, music, movies. The sheer amount of time spent online meant that most of the chat was bound to be filler – and a lot of time was spent on conversations that ultimately went nowhere (for maximum effect, read the following while constantly playing the MSN message alert sound, found here):

d33my says: hey

d33my’s friend says: hey

d33my says: whats going on?

d33my’s friend says: nm

*ten minute pause*

d33my’s friend says: u?

*d33my’s friend is offline.*

At least, that’s how I remember it. Maybe I was more unpopular than I thought. Of course, there were regular contacts (usually your best friend/s) that you had long, in-depth conversations with. As various Messenger updates were released, the ability to play games was added, along with the ability to send hand drawn picture messages, which satiated teenage boys’ ingrained desire to draw and distribute filthy sex-oriented images. Did girls do this too?

There was something particularly special about seeing the little status box pop up in the bottom right corner of the screen (accompanied by the equally satisfying sound effect) which told you your crush was online. After a while you’d develop a special sort of peripheral vision in which you could determine who had signed in just by the first couple of characters of their username, particularly if it involved various emoticons. Of course this was fraught with danger when your mates got wind of who your crush was and changed their username to something incredibly similar, leading you to look like a dick by starting a conversation with someone without checking their email address and finding yourself flirting with the same person who had given you a wedgie two hours ago.

In fact, there were many similar pranks/activities to spice up your MSN experience when simply chatting with people got boring. Remember being added to (or starting) huge group conversations with someone’s entire contact list? It became a sort of online Survivor to see who would outlast everyone and be left alone with Андрій from Ukraine who vaguely knew your friend’s brother’s girlfriend. Or how about sending Nudges to someone every ten seconds (or however often MSN allowed it – I can imagine a Beta version of Messenger without the nudge time limit which would have caused everyone to violently smash their computers to bits within seconds) and having them nudge you back? This would usually go on until either both people got sick of it (rarely) or one party blocked the other (often).

MSN was also beneficial in many ways you might not initially imagine. I know for a fact my typing speed was aided specifically from constant MSN usage – no-one’s going to wait for someone to take a full minute to type ‘how are you’ so you’d better learn fast or stick to handwriting letters. Of course many people learned bad typing habits (I do not touch type in a traditional manner; rather my hands hover over the keyboard like mutant hummingbirds and peck wildly at letters until the correct combination is reached) that can probably never be unlearned.

As far as I remember hardly anybody used the space for a profile picture with a picture of themselves. Instead, they were filled with funny pictures, album covers, skimpy bikini models or super-hunks. There was also the fun of coming up with a unique screen name, which could be changed quickly and often. Song lyrics, inspirational quotes or swear words were favourites amongst my contact list, and a lot could be discerned about someone without even starting a conversation with them but rather examining their username. Nearly anybody who had a flower or love-heart in their name was a girl, someone who used obscure song-lyrics was a wannabe musician and anyone who used an actual name like ‘Steve’ was probably a cop. I remember using Google to find an ‘MSN name generator’ which would come up with cool lyrics or quotes and have appropriate emoticons to match. I tried Googling the same thing as I was writing this and my anti-virus software identified the number one result as a security threat. Such is MSN’s fall from grace.

And what a fall it has been. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why MSN is no longer as popular, but the advent of sites like MySpace (which deserves another post entirely) and Facebook coupled with the prevalence of mobile phones (and cheap texting) had a lot to do with it. Of course, I’m basing my assumption of MSN being ‘not popular anymore’ amongst my own friends, and to a wider extent, generation. I’m not sure if younger or older people still use MSN regularly, and I’m sure there’s some obscure country in the world where it’s still used by the teenagers as the communication model of choice. In fact, as recently as 2009 Microsoft announced that the service still had a rather impressive 330 million active users. Similarly, I’m not arguing that MSN was the first or only or even biggest online instant chat service, but from my experience it was the one that most people I know used.

There’s every chance that the success of sites like Facebook and Twitter owe much more to MSN than we give credit for. It established in an entire generation a familiarity with online connection and the concept of an online network of friends. More than that, the countless hours spent on MSN established a strong desire to have such a connection, and paved the way for our current penchant for online social networking. If you’ve never done it, I imagine it’s actually quite novel to have an online text-only instant conversation with someone but thanks to MSN, for most people of my generation we’ve scarcely known different.

It’s strange to write a retrospective style piece of a phenomenon which was still wildly popular less than a decade ago. For one thing, it makes me feel cultured and wise, and I can imagine gathering the grandkids around the digital fire and having them entranced at my stories of MSN in much the same way I remember thinking how novel it would have been to send a telegraph to someone. Furthermore, it once again highlights the breakneck speed at which online culture develops. I was surprised to discover that I only signed up for Facebook at the start of 2009 (it feels like much, much longer) - if I take my estimation of using MSN for about five years, then I currently still have more years’ experience on MSN than I do on Facebook – something which seems utterly peculiar. Perhaps in another five or six years’ time when we've migrated over to the next big social networking phenomenon we’ll be reminiscing about the good old days of Facebook. But it's comforting to know that there's a group of young adults out there who, deep down, would all be pretty happy if we rejected social networking progress and made a large scale retro-migration back to MSN.

Do Not Adjust Your Set

New technology inevitably leaves casualties. The DVD usurped the video tape, just as the CD laid waste to the LP record and the wheel surpassed dragging things. One of the 20th century’s greatest technologies, television, is threatened by the internet – the other great technological innovation of the 20th century. Will people put up with ever-lengthening commercial breaks and strict programming times when they know that they can get what they want usually ad-free and able to be watched at their convenience? The advent of the DVR has already changed behaviour in regards to allowing people to watch shows when they want to. The internet can take this idea a step further, allowing the download of whole seasons of television shows, usually illegally. It is possible that in the future we will see the current programming model overhauled and commercial television as we know it might plausibly cease to exist.

But does commercial television have to be at odds with the internet? TV networks have already wised up to a lot of the digital age trends. News and current affairs programs in particular work well with input from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and it is common for TV shows to advertise their Facebook or Twitter accounts and encourage users to give instantaneous feedback on the show they are watching. This direct feedback can then be used to further determine target audiences and content, thereby creating better programming—which benefits the viewer— and more directed advertising, which benefits the network. For example, if a particular news program gets an influx of ‘follows’ or ‘likes’ from predominantly single urban women, then they can tailor their advertising accordingly and reap the benefits. Such information has been available to TV networks in the past, but never at such a rapid rate and arguably with less information than a Facebook or Twitter profile can provide.

As of this writing, commercial television is still going strong. It is a worldwide industry that has a firm grip on billions of dollars of advertising revenue and still has enough cultural currency to infiltrate pop culture.  But behaviour is changing. With a lot of television shows now available online – both legally and illegally – waiting a whole week to catch an episode of your favourite show can become taxing. The problem is exacerbated if you live outside the region where the program is produced; American television can take at least six months to reach Australian shores, if not longer. By the time you are watching the ‘latest episode’ of your favourite American drama in Australia the next season is already being shown in the States. It’s unsurprising then that people turn to downloading shows in order to get their fix rather than depend on the often unreliable network programming.

I’m basing a lot of my observations of TV watching behaviour on myself and my friends, which is a small sample size to say the least. But I think the assumption can be made that as members of Generation Y we are much more susceptible to downloading our favourite shows illegally rather than watch them on commercial television. The legality and implications of such behaviour is a tricky issue, and this post doesn’t intend to delve into the morality of pirated internet content. It can’t be ignored, however, that such behaviour exists, and especially that for many people of Generation Y it is generally seen as acceptable.

However, there is still a sizeable market of the older generations who might not do the same and therefore keeps the current model of network television—with its pre-determined programming times and set commercial breaks—viable. The most watched shows in Australia are those which present family situations and domestic life (think Masterchef, The Block, Home and Away, etc.) and therefore are relatable to a large percentage of the population, and not just 20-something students with laptops and University bandwidth at their disposal.

Furthermore, the current model of legal internet programming offered by the networks can be confusing, and at times just as limited as conventional programming. A myriad of ‘online television’ options provided by commercial networks exist, but these range from ‘catch-up’ services of already aired content (usually available only for a certain time), or ‘live streaming’ content which means that viewers still adhere to conventional programming schedules. If you want the liberty of being able to legally watch whole episodes of previous seasons whenever you want, expect to pay for it. And this money generally goes right back into the pockets of the networks. The Hulu service in the United States, which streams shows from ABC, NBC and FOX, pays 50 to 70 percent of revenue generated (primarily from advertising) back to the networks. Don’t expect this sort of arrangement to change any time in the near future. Naturally, television networks want to create a profit, that’s why they have to safeguard their productions and ensure to the best of their ability that they don’t lose money due to piracy.

The relative success of services such as Hulu demonstrates that a market does exist for people who want to watch TV online and pay for it. But how long will that market last? For while there still exists generations who have not been exposed to illegally downloading television shows the reality is that in the future all generations will have lived in a time when such an option has always been available. The technology exists for people to create pirated television shows – and unlike television networks, pirates do not charge for their services because they don’t stand to lose money from doing so. It is reasonable to assume that some pirates believe that they are doing a public good – a modern day Robin Hood, if you will, by taking content from the rich and providing it to the poor.

As mentioned previously, I don’t want to get into the rights and wrongs of online piracy. What I am interested in, however, is the direction that television will take in the future. A pertinent comparison to make would be the music industry, which has been threatened by the rise of the internet and peer to peer sites, and has accordingly had to change its mode of operation, with large stores like iTunes perhaps providing the musical equivalent of a service like Hulu.

So what happens when our society is made up solely of those people who know how (or know somebody who knows a guy who knows how) to obtain content for free? Will illegally downloading television content in its entirety become so common that TV networks are forced to concede defeat? Or will there always be a section of society who shuns online piracy and instead relies on the services that the commercial networks provide? Perhaps we could see an end to conventional television programming as networks no longer have the finances to fund new productions. We might forever be stuck watching re-runs of Two and a Half-Men, while wistfully remembering the good old days where we had access to new television shows, even if they did arrive six months late.

How come I'm not rich and famous yet?

We live in an age where creative types have unprecedented potential for self-promotion. Blogs, online galleries, Myspace profiles – we have at our fingertips the resources that creative souls of past generations could only dream about. Musicians such as the Arctic Monkeys and Sandi Thom personify the potential of the internet: overnight sensations that made their big breakthrough online. But are these artists the exception to the rule? Can anybody ‘make it big’ with the help of the internet? Does the internet foster and cultivate creative success, or hamper it?

You could argue that the internet presents the 21^st century version of the ‘American Dream’, summed up below by American author James Truslow Adams (who, I’m sure, would have had a blog if such a thing existed in 1931):

         “A dream...in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

Do Adams’ words also describe the wealth of opportunity created by the internet?  The biggest limitation is that internet success is not actually available to ‘each man and each woman,’ but rather is limited to those who have access to the web, which eliminates a large chunk of the world’s population. However, one could argue that the American Dream applies only to those who make it to America in the first place, so perhaps our comparison is still valid if we limit it to those who have internet access.

If we proceed with that caveat, it seems then that yes, the internet is the sort of place where prosperity and success can be found; provided you want to find it. What sort of people could use the internet to become successful? It seems the net provides a great opportunity for a select group of what I tentatively call the creators: visual artists (including graphic designers and photographers), musicians and writers. These are the big three. Visual artists can set up their own websites and online galleries or join sites such as Flickr. Musicians have the wealth of sites like Myspace, SoundCloud and even iTunes. And writers, who perhaps have it easiest of all, have writing opportunities surrounding them: blogs; forums; comment boxes; Twitter – the list is, for all intents and purposes, endless. The internet is the world’s biggest soapbox.

Before I proceed, I should provide a working definition of ‘success’ in this context, which is difficult it is a concept which differs for all, but I would imagine that for the aforementioned creators ‘success’ would mean exposure, positive critical reception of your work and perhaps financial prosperity as well. 

With the myriad of options available for creators then it would seem that success would follow, right? It’s not quite that easy. The great thing about the internet as promoting tool – and, alas, its downfall – is the fact that it is so easy to use. Anybody with basic understanding of the internet (i.e. a lot of people) can become a self-promoter. Here are some frightening stats: there are a total of 161,754,549 blogs in existence, with 62,814 of those coming online in the last 24 hours.[1] If you’re a blogger (a mugs game, if you ask me) there is very little chance that your blog will differentiate itself from the millions of others out there. If you’re a musician, there are over 8 million other artists you have to compete with on Myspace.[2] And Flickr has over 500 billion images, with 3000 being uploaded every minute in September 2010.[3] If you’re a creator, you’ve got a lot of competition. You cannot hope that a record producer or publisher will blindly stumble upon your profile or blog. You still have to get out in the real world and work hard. Artists still have to pester small galleries for exhibitions, musicians still have to record demos and play shows, and writers constantly have to prove to Centrelink that they’re diligently looking for a real job.

The other problem with the ease of self promotion other than saturation is perhaps an even tougher one to overcome: the way society currently values internet material versus ‘real world’ material. While it is true that the internet can generate huge followings of your work, how often does internet success translate into real world success? Although it does happen it is quite rare. I would argue that a photographer getting an image published in a well respected photography magazine or a writer publishing an article or book would be greater than having 100+ followers on Flickr or Blogger, respectively. Of course, as mentioned above, it does depend on what the creator defines as success. But if the creator is looking to create legitimately critically acclaimed pieces of work (which, I believe, is the goal of most artists, writers, musicians) then the internet is a difficult place to achieve that, simply because our society still values ‘real world’ success and prosperity over its ‘virtual’ counterpart. I don’t know fully why this is: it probably has its roots in the ‘anybody can publish anything on the internet’ argument. It is possible that future societies will become more accepting of the internet as a legitimate publishing domain (especially, perhaps, for musicians and artists) but equally likely that they won’t, as people ultimately need others to tell them what’s good; and the internet subverts this by allowing anybody to become a (self)promoter.

What’s more, sometimes the success of internet sensations is a little over exaggerated: Laura Barton noted in her 2005 article on the rise of the Arctic Monkeys that the band also had mainstream radio support and airtime.[4] What this shows, perhaps, is the capacity of the internet to be a springboard to success; however it is very difficult to become successful based solely on website hits and downloads. The old maxims of hard work and talent (and a bit of luck) still ring true in any creator’s field. Which is what makes the original comparison of the internet dream with the American dream so apt: success and prosperity for all, but only if you’re prepared to work really, really hard at it. As they say in the real world: there’s no such thing as a free lunch.   

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[1] Data taken Saturday, 14 May 2011, from blogpulse.com

[2] http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/01/09/social-network-stats-facebook-myspace-reunion-jan-2008/

[3] http://blog.flickr.net/en/2010/09/19/5000000000/

[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/oct/25/popandrock.arcticmonkeys

The One With a Mini Epiphany

I came across a fantastic website the other day, ‘The Johnny Cash Project’ (JCP). The website allows users to recreate one frame for Cash’s music video ‘Ain’t No Grave’, and then compiles the user submissions into one complete production. The result is brilliant. Check it out for yourself:

http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/

To those of you clever enough to open that link in a new window and continue to read this while it’s loading, you get a gold star and my insight.

If I may get deep for a moment, this project is valuable not only for its artistic innovation, but it is actually somewhat symbolic of the internet as a whole. The JCP is a collection of small bits of information, which, by themselves, are quite unique and entertaining. You can think of these single frames as web-pages. And once they are put together, they create a visual array which not only contains value in each frame but combines to create an even more stunning overall product. And that’s kind of like the internet. Websites themselves are useful. But when connected together, in the aptly named World Wide Web, the sites become part of something bigger; they combine to create a product which is comprised of its inherently different but equally valued parts.

What really makes the JCP unique is the ability for ordinary users to participate in the creation of the whole. People have a choice to contribute to the overall product, to decide how the final version will look. Similarly, the Web is not a government run initiative, nor does it run solely on the pockets of wealthy businessmen. It’s the sort of place where a pimply undergrad student can create a worldwide network of 550 million users; or a professor and an entrepreneur can begin a project that is gradually documenting the sum of human knowledge (which also sounds like the premise of a good sitcom).

We are not passive users of the internet. Every internet user has the ability to create a part of the World Wide Web. That might be something you hadn’t seriously contemplated before. Every time you upload a photo on Facebook; leave a comment on a newspaper article; publish a blog; edit a Wikipedia article or post in a forum, you are actively adding to the largest collation of human resources the world has ever known. We are not driving on the information superhighway – we are constructing it.

All the News That's Fit to Blog

Foreword 

(yes, this might possibly be the first blog in the world that has a foreword. You are part of history. Embrace it. Take a screenshot. Tell your grandkids.)

When I was asked to write this foreword, I was somewhat shocked. I am not ashamed to tell you that when I, William Randolph Hearst, was offered the chance to once again deal in my second-favourite commodity (words), it brought a small tear to my eye. I can remember so long ago, when I first started in the newspaper game, what it was like: heavy machinery, ink everywhere, and not a computer to be found. We didn’t have spell-checker back then, but we certainly did have notoriously tricky words like ‘gubernatorial’ and ‘abstinence’! The kids of today don’t know how easy they have it.

Which brings me to the reason that I’m here today: to provide a (primarily conceptual) bridge between the old school ‘print-edition’ and the newfangled ‘online newspaper’. How has the newspaper reporting game changed as the world rapidly moves towards digitised information? It’s a fascinating question to consider. It is not a field I’m qualified to discuss, so instead I’ll hand over to Dominic Stevenson, who has had much less experience in newspaper publishing but infinitely more experience in blogging and shameless impersonation. And since I’m told this piece will take the online form of a blog, I have nothing left to do but let Stevenson get on with it.

William Randolph Hearst*

Historically, newspapers have been one of the primary ways in which the news is collated and disseminated to the masses; a cornerstone of the media. With the advent of the internet, the traditional set-up of the newspaper was challenged. Would the traditional daily become redundant under the heel of the internet with its instantaneous nature and inherent cost effectiveness? At this point in time, papers continue to circulate in physical format (and my prediction is they will continue to do so for a long time) but there is no doubt that all major newspapers are becoming equally reliant on the success of their website in order to stay relevant in the cut-throat modern media age. Join me, won’t you, as we take a stroll into the virtual newsagency and examine the beast that is the online newspaper?

Possibly the biggest feature of online newspapers is the advent of the comments section. Comments provide readers with a real time snapshot of what readers think of an issue or article. This can at times enhance the online experience – an insightful comment from another reader can indeed affirm or challenge the stance we have taken on the issue and provide a useful forum for debate. The instantaneous feedback from readers also keeps reporters and columnists on their toes, they are now publically (and instantly) at the mercy of their readers.

In the real world, however, the comments section is much more frequently used by loud-mouth dolts to express their opinions IN CAPS LOCK or with badpunctuation!!! Of course, this can be entertaining in itself and I think as an open democratic society we should be ever vigilant to ensure we never take away the basic rights for idiots to utilise their soapboxes, whether they be virtual or otherwise.

An interesting habit which I have formed with browsing newspaper websites is actually becoming bored with the article itself (damn you, internet, for reducing my atten) and scrolling down to the comments, which are often much more juicy. To be honest, the anonymous public will always have a much meatier opinion on mildly controversial legislation than any ‘qualified’ journalist will. Perhaps one day the newspaper columnists will cotton on to this and actually have the comments at the top of the webpage, and we can all stop pretending we read the article anyway and just watch Tim from Sydney and Vanessa from Parkdale slog out the climate change debate.

A related cousin which is sometimes invited to Comment family gatherings is the instant online poll, another tool which I often find much more entertaining and insightful than the actual ‘news.’ It’s great fun to try and find similar articles on news websites with vastly different readership demographics and check out the poll discrepancies (or you could use the internet to do something actually fun). However, like the comments section, the poll provides an invaluable instant gauge on how the reading public is feeling about any particular issue. It makes it that much easier to determine if you fall within the consensus on delicate subjects and if not, gives you a chance to discreetly change your opinion on controversial matters before you blurt out some politically incorrect joke and ruin a party. It’s handy little benefits like this that make me constantly wonder how society ever functioned without the internet.

Another advantage of the newspaper website is the joys of multimedia integration. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and newspapers can easily dedicate whole galleries to subjects and stories where previously one or two photos would have had to suffice in order to save space. Furthermore, the use of video can be utilised successfully on the site, although sometimes the clips are of questionable content. A couple of days ago, Hobart daily The Mercury was running with a video that showed Lady Gaga falling off a flaming piano. In the prehistoric past, we perhaps would have had to rely on the vividness of the reporters words in order to conjure the mayhem that must have ensued. But now we can view Gaga’s unrequested gravity surplus in all its glory. Of course, in the prehistoric past this probably also wouldn’t have qualified as news, but luckily the internet means that newspapers can be a lot less choosy and elitist with their reporting, which can only be a good thing.

I’ve already briefly discussed in earlier posts about the reliability of internet news. Certainly, the internet news has provided a fantastic resource which we can get instant updates on a fast breaking story. But it also adds the danger that the wrong facts will be reported in a desire to update news quickly rather than accurately. This incorrect information is then spouted through the social media sites before it can be properly reeled in, leading to vast rumours circulating much quicker than they ever could before.

Speaking of social media, it has become increasingly apparent that everyday citizens are now becoming part of the news publishing cycle, with newspapers calling for reader’s photos and videos to supplement journalist’s stories. This has angered some aspects of the media community, particularly professional photographers, who feel their careers are threatened by the influx of amateurs. It’s a delicate debate. On the one hand we should embrace the opening of the news cycle to every day citizens, who can often provide unique photos and perspectives that might be missed by the time a newspaper photographer reaches the story. Of course, it’s possible that the market will take care of this debate when the public realise that their photos are worth something to the newspapers and begin charging accordingly. One must consider, however, that for many amateurs seeing their photo on the homepage of a national newspaper’s website could indeed be incentive enough to supply their images for free.

Actually, as I was researching that last paragraph (‘researching’ is a word that’s thrown around a lot these days. Please note that I use it in its loosest form) I came across this, an app from Channel Nine that provides you with a quick and easy way to send in your photos and videos to the station: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/8227617/nine-newsbreak-app-launches 

Whilst not strictly related to online newspapers, the app illustrates nicely the flourishing of amateur contributions to the media cycle. Of course the terms and conditions make it quite clear that you’re selling your soul: “In submitting Footage through the Footage Services, you grant to Nine an exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, transferable, royalty-free licence to use, copy, reproduce, edit, modify and exploit the Footage in any media, and to sublicense such rights to other” but as I mentioned before the narcissistic cravings of the avid mobile snapper know no bounds. (By the way, what do Channel 9 mean when they say they have the right to ‘exploit’ the footage? Are they planning to make it work in their salt mines for below-award rates?**) Although in this case we are dealing with television and not newspaper, the overall principal is the same: the media market is beginning to get savvy to the huge amount of free images and material that it can get from the public, and the internet is an integral part of this.

What sort of threat does the online newspaper pose to the more traditional print medium? It’s hard to find solid data. The ever reliable Melbourne tabloid Herald Sun reports that “The Herald Sun remains Australia's most popular daily newspaper, attracting 1,520,000 readers Monday to Friday.” Unfortunately, this data was collated in May 2005. As much fun as it is to reminisce (the Billboard Hot 100 number one song for May 2005 was Gwen Stefani’s hauntingly introspective classic “Hollaback Girl”) the Herald Sun isn’t exactly forthcoming in recent data.

Rival Melbourne daily The Age is a little more helpful, reporting that in Dec. 2009 (Billboard No 1. was Empire State of Mind - Jay Z ft. Alicia Keys) it had a readership of nearly 700,000. In any case, these numbers are still quite large, and it seems that people are still quite attached to their print versions. There seems to be something familiar and comforting in holding a physical copy of the news, and the print editions of newspapers are generally laid out in a very reader friendly and less “CLICK HERE” “NO, HERE!” NO, WAIT, HERE!” manner, as evidenced by the website for The Australian below:

Fun game time! Try and count the number of clickable options!

For those of you sensible enough not to play my little game, I counted 58 clickable options all up (including ads), and that’s just for the top quarter of the homepage visible in that screenshot, and doesn’t include drop down options which are available if you hover over certain links. That is a phenomenal and somewhat overwhelming amount of information for the brain to comprehend. Compare this with a typical print paper front-page (I nearly called it a homepage), which has (based on my count of the Age front-page for Saturday April 9) just under twenty front-page objects that draw your eye (including ads and photographs). Considering many people like to read the newspaper in the morning, the more mellow print paper is definitely a more attractive option than the information cluster-bomb website. However, it must be remembered that there has been over a century of print medium formatting, whereas online newspapers have been around for less than twenty years. I’m sure that the website design will become more intuitive and attractive.

I have barely tapped the surface of all the goodies that online newspaper websites have to offer. Online archives, live blogs with journalists, and more ads than you can poke a cursor at all deserve at some stage to be examined and discussed in their full glory. But for now, suffice to say that while the print newspaper will always be the grand-daddy of modern media, it’s worth keeping an eye on its insolent and hyperactive great grandchild, who in its own inimitable way ensures that we’re always up to date with the myriad of useless and depressing things that are constantly happening.

*W.R Hearst may or may not have actually agreed to contribute to this blog, but by assuming that at some stage in his life he had either written or uttered all the words used above, it was simply a matter of me editing them into a coherent and luckily, somewhat relevant paragraph.

**As far as I know Channel 9 don’t actually operate any salt mines, but wouldn’t it be deliciously ironic if someone broke the news of their discovery through the Newsbreaker app?

Buy this Blog

I get the feeling that this is how advertising agencies view the internet; an infinite information superhighway with billboards positively begging to be plastered with corporate logos, slogans, campaigns, giveaways and promotions. Online advertisements give marketers a certain edge over their real-world counterparts; in that online promotions can be interactive, requiring the consumer to engage with the ad, and therefore hopefully take more notice of it than a passive ad in a newspaper or on a billboard. Here’s an example of ‘active advertising’ that I saw on Facebook recently:

I can’t help but wonder if they would have had more responses if they also included options like ‘surprisingly overpriced’ or ‘the way Suzuki have turned the 2010 into the 2011 model by adding a new sticker and ad campaign’ but you can’t blame them for trying. In hindsight I’m annoyed I didn’t try to click on one of the poll options because I want to know what happens when you vote. I assume that there’s a little control room somewhere deep underground with Suzuki henchmen watching monitors and as soon as the ad is clicked a red light and alarm go off, springing a team into action who quickly ascertain your age, sex, height, weight, preferred colour and favourite Owen Wilson movie (all information that I’m sure Facebook has filed somewhere) before despatching a B52 to carpet bomb your house with Suzuki pamphlets.

Of course not all ad-engagement is as subtle as Suzuki’s even-handed poll. Ever been forced to click the ‘X’ on one of those ads that pops up out of nowhere? You’ve just engaged with the company’s ad, and they’re hoping that the 1 second it takes you to locate the ‘x’ will give your brain enough time to register the product, consciously or subconsciously. Interactions like this force you to acknowledge the presence of the advertisement, something that is not necessarily true of television or newspapers. Additionally, if you are interested in the ad being displayed, 9 times out of 10 you can click on the ad and be transported to a page which will give you more information about the product, a benefit for advertisers that simply doesn’t exist with newspaper or television.

Google revolutionised online advertising with their system by showing you ads that were relevant to your search results or webpage that you were viewing. Facebook have taken this to the next level by using their huge tracts of information to ascertain the best demographic for companies ads. As soon as I included The Big Lebowski into my favourite movies on my profile I noticed ads selling TBL t-shirts, and thanks to having The Rolling Stones as one of the bands I ‘like’ I’m never going to forget that their $300+ box set of all their singles is being released soon. This targeted advertising is a phenomenon I’m sure everybody has noticed and if you haven’t you’ve probably subconsciously bought every single thing that they’ve told you to because you’re the type that advertising agencies endearingly call a ‘sucker’.

It's worth wondering whether this sort of targeted advertising is preferential for us as consumers/ad receivers (I have no doubt it’s beneficial for the companies). At least with this approach we’re only annoyed by ads that we might be interested in, as opposed to the grab-bag that newspapers and television can give you, although to be fair that advertising is still based around demographics. For example, Melbourne’s The Age website displayed an ad for the Australian Chamber Orchestra whereas the Herald Sun had a banner for a $20million dollar Tattslotto super draw. Most who know Melbourne would agree that these ads confirm the two paper’s generally accepted readership demographics but the point is that these ads will never quite be as pinpoint accurate as the results given by Google or Facebook.

Interestingly, until I actually began to think consciously about online advertising I would have to say that, for the most part, it sits quietly in the background and usually barely affects the online experience, unlike television which reminds you every eight to ten minutes that there are corporations out there that crave your cash. Of course there are exceptions to every rule but you’ll find that the better websites tend to have a low-key approach to onsite ads. It would be self defeating if you drive everyone away from your site because it’s unusable due to a myriad of ads.

Another trend I’ve noticed lately is to the incursion of online advertising into the real world. It is not uncommon now to see a large billboard displaying a traditional advertisement and then have the company or product’s Facebook page at the bottom of it. The phenomenon is explained when you examine the benefits for the company if you decide to join their Facebook page:

#1 The company generates excitement about the product they were initially selling on the billboard, as you can assume that whatever was being sold on the billboard will be the prominent product being discussed on the Facebook page at this point in time. This is perhaps the primary or at least ostensible decision for including the Facebook link.

But wait, there’s more.

#2 It’s generally a lot easier to join a Facebook group than it is to leave one. Joining takes maybe two clicks: one to get to the page and one to join. Leaving takes more: get to your profile page (one click), getting to the group you want to leave itself (two), clicking leaving the group (three) and then possibly a confirm dialog box (four). If it takes twice as long to leave a group than to join I doubt that many users will bother. And that’s what the company wants, because now whenever they release a new product/ad campaign/poll it’s going to show right up on your Newsfeed.

#3 And the final, wonderful gazillion dollar benefit is that due to Facebook’s huge information coffers the company will also have a good idea of the demographics that do join its Facebook page, and will be able to structure future ad campaigns accordingly, thereby making their campaigns more successful and reaping the rewards. And they get all of this for the initial cost of the ad on the billboard!

This has been a pretty introductory glance into the world of online advertising; there are a million more examples out there and no doubt the way in which companies use their online billboard space will continue to evolve as internet habits change. Hopefully now that you’ve had a primer course in online advertising you won’t part with your hard earned dollars quite so easily next time some faceless corporation shamelessly incurs on your otherwise pleasant internet time. 

Used without permission from McDonald's. If I suddenly disappear, boycott Big Macs and avenge my death.

Amazon Studios

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
Winston Churchill

Starting with a wanky and pretentious quote is a great way to begin a blog post, as it quickly establishes that I, the author, am much smarter than you (it takes a lightning quick wit to type ‘democracy quote’ into Google, I can assure you. Can you imagine how hard people had to work to be pretentious before the internet? They probably had to read books). Pretension aside, I have actually included Winnie’s wise words for a reason; and that is to introduce the theme of democracy into this article, and, more specifically, introduce the follies of democracy, especially when it comes to www.amazon.com’s new project: Amazon Studios.

Amazon Studios is a world first open community film-making project, in which anybody can upload a script to the Studio’s website. Once a script is uploaded people can rate it, discuss it and even revise it, making the changes they would like to see and then re-uploading. These scripts can then be made into ‘test-movies’, a sample video clip (again made by anybody who has the time/commitment to do so) which will give the world-wide community an idea of the finished film product. The idea behind all this is that extensive world-wide collaboration will produce scripts which are good enough to turn into Hollywood blockbusters.

The encouraging aspect of Amazon Studios is that they’re not just pissing in the wind when they say that there is a chance for your movie to be discovered. They have a ‘development deal’ with Warner Bros. Studios, and have some well-known film-makers and writers who judge the monthly contests which are meant to weed out the cream of the crop in collaborative online filmmaking. These contests are serious business: 1.1 Million dollars is up for grabs for the best film script/idea uploaded to Amazon Studios in 2011.

Why it will work

One thing that Amazon Studios has going for it is its funding. This isn’t a small start-up from some Hollywood hovel by a bitter and resentful writer who couldn’t crack it into the big-time. These guys have some serious financial muscle behind them (Amazon.com’s revenue in 2009 was close to US$25 billion), evident in their development deal with WB and huge cash prizes offered in the writing contests. This financial backing adds credibility to the product, and provides incentive for artists to work hard.

In addition to their financial position, Amazon Studios bring a revolutionary idea to the table. The concept of user-made content could potentially revolutionise the way the film industry works. Who knows better what the people want than the people themselves? And the internet, the crux of the whole project, provides the basis for global collaboration. This project is directly born out of the existence of the ‘net; it could not possibly work without it. It is an example of an innovative way to harness the highly developed connectedness of the globe.

Why it won’t work

But within the idea of a revolutionised movie-making industry lies the problem: the movie industry doesn’t need to be revolutionised. The people who work in Hollywood are the best in the business*, and the cut-throat nature and competitiveness of the industry demands the survival of the fittest. You could argue that a similar cut-throat industry could develop via Amazon Studios, but I would contend that Hollywood has just the right amount of competitiveness; and it is competitiveness against professionals. Amazon Studios, on the other hand, has the potential not to produce brilliantly collaborated ideas but actually destroy feasible projects due to amateurism. An analogy may be handy at this point: imagine the original concept of a movie as a tiny seed. In Hollywood, this seed is cultivated carefully; its care is placed (more often than not) in the hands of experienced writers, producers and directors. These people care for the seed and nurture it, so as to give it the best possible chance of becoming a majestic flowering Oscar-tree.

Amazon Studios, on the other hand, begins with the seed, but it is in danger of being over-watered and trampled. Because anybody can edit and change anybody else’s project; a really great idea can turn into a lousy one quickly.  Amazonian apologists will argue that this is counteracted by the democratic nature of AS, that bad ideas will never find favour with the public. My counter-argument is that the people who give the green-light to a project in Hollywood know a lot more about good movies and ideas than people who vote for a project on AS. A really ridiculous and silly idea for a movie (say a huge ship which is declared unsinkable gets sunk on its maiden voyage...yawn) may find favour with Amazon Studios because the prime voting audience might be thirteen year old boys with nothing better to do than vote for stupid movies. Sure, the judges who oversee the monthly and annual contests are qualified, but for the movies to get looked at by those judges they first have to find favour with a potentially idiotic public.

This is where our old mate Winnie’s quote comes back into it: do you really want to trust the average person to decide which movies get made? Or would you rather trust the ponytailed, fast-talking Hollywood exec who reads Variety and whose primary interest is reading scripts and producing movies? It’s a tough one, I know, but for me the exec just wins out. Let me put it this way: would you want your house designed by a committee of Joe Schlubs or by one qualified architect?

I have tried to reach this conclusion in the most even-handed way I could. I don’t want it to seem like I’m poking holes in Amazon Studios’ concept for the sake of it. I think it would be fantastic if an online community-produced feature got made into a blockbuster. But think of it this way: if a supposedly democratic society can vote G.W Bush in twice, can we really trust democracy with our movies?  

Check out: http://studios.amazon.com/

*Small and purposely hard-to-read disclaimer: I am aware I have made the rather ungainly assumption that 'Hollywood' is where all the best people are. Film industries in other countries make fantastic movies too. In the context of Amazon Studios, however, it is the most relevant film industry to relate to.