“What about blogs and podcasts?” is a question that often comes up at seminars and workshops.
What about them? Blogs are written by anybody, and if anybody was a journalist, the supply would exceed the demand. Then newspapers, magazines and newscasts wouldn’t have to pay for staff at all. But they do pay, because good journalists are rare and come with a price tag. And it will always be like that, no matter how many journalism courses there are at training schools.
Journalism training schools are pricey and they are full precisely because everyone wants to be a journalist, and very few get there – about seven percent.
Podcasts are just a way of subscribing to radio or television programming for reception on a mobile device (PDA or cellphone). They “pull” (you have to actively get them). Mobile TV – the current hype – is “push” – you just get it. But television and radio chew power, and it is doubtful that batteries will last long enough to view television as we are used to: for long periods. And there are already portable radio receivers, and have been for a long time.
But what about all these outlets for citizen television: empowering people; anyone can make a film; people make movies with cellphone cameras and post them to YouTube? Isn’t that a sign of the new media? Empowerment, democracy, freedom?
Read a book like Andrew Hussey’s “Paris” and you will see how people who feel deeply about issues have resorted overnight to radical new newspapers, journals and magazines. They come and go, and they have been doing so since John Gutenberg made it cheap and easy to do so. Blogs, YouTube and cheap and nasty video cameras have just made it cheap and easy. Nothing has changed.
As it has been easy to print and distribute badly written underground newspapers for hundreds of years, it’s cheap and easy to make bad films and TV programmes, and to distribute them.
That’s why, as with journalism schools, there are a proliferation of costly film schools that are always full. And the same proportion of graduates makes it into the profession – about seven percent.
Blogs, podcasts, mobile TV – all these things are merely distribution media. They are not the content. Content is rare, it comes from people with talent and experience; and it costs money. Average citizens don’t have the money to make good content. They know that, and that is why they are willing to pay to receive it.
Howard Thomas is a media business consultant, trainer and specialist in audience psychology.