Blaming the environment, or the medium?
Brian Lam had an interesting retort here on Gizmodo, to Mike Elgan's recent post on Computerworld.com discussing the shortcomings of gadget blogs. Although he acknowledged the "tough love" in Mike's post, he went overboard by turing it into a diatribe on why print deserves to die.
Lord knows, print has its problems, but Brian managed to spend an awful lot of time complaining about things that are inherent to print, rather than acknowledging that almost all tech magazines today are focused on the Web first, with print surviving for those few titles where it's a necessary part of the business model. It doesn't help that Brian ignores that Mike was speaking to a business IT audience about gadget blogs, and it's not like he called out Brian, or Gizmodo, by name. So I don't really understand Brian's vitriol, racism and ageism. Let's face it, if I said "I can't relate to young Asian guys," I'd never work in this business again. But I guess he gets a free pass, thanks to Gawker Media's reputation for snark.
The following is a late draft of a posting that's awaiting moderation at Gizmodo. I don't know if Brian has the guts to post this or not on his site, so here it is for your enjoyment, with references to Brian's laundry list:
I don't even know why I'm bothering, since print magazines are dropping faster than banks. But as someone who hates to see misinformation, a technophile across four decades and a twenty-five year veteran of IT publishing who's worked for everyone meaningful except Conde Nast and Ziff, I have a few things to add to the conversation.
0) Mike's article was in Computerworld (a book I know well, though one I've never worked for) and I can tell you that he's not writing for the Engadget/Gizmodo audience. He's writing for high-end business IT, the people who spend millions of dollars a year on kit and services.
1) Of course print titles are going with blogs; the news operation is online-first for almost everybody, because that's the best way to make it work. It's always going to take longer to get something into print than online, unless the publication gets in bed with the vendor and gets early access. This is immutable -- production and mechanical deadlines are notoriously unforgiving. When you look around, it's clear that a print presence for tech is a luxury; we're just ahead of the curve in this industry.
2) Every company pressures the press to ignore things; some of us are better at resisting it than others. Personally, I've taken a few controversial stances along the way; I've never had my bosses tell me that a story was off-limits, even if it meant pissing off our biggest advertiser.
3) Charging for print subscriptions is strictly for the consumer market; the business IT books such as Computerworld do it all by controlled circulation and yearly qualification of the subscriber base. Traditionally, subscriptions have merely covered the costs of production and distribution: paper, ink and postage. The problem we face today is that ad revenues for online don't cover the cost of a proper news operation; print advertising has made up the difference. If you don't have a print component, that money has to come from somewhere, whether it's an event business, consulting, or overseas licensing of the magazine's brand.
4) This problem is common to most media sites, and only some of it is a limitation of the CMSes they use. There's a business angle as well: they've finally convinced advertisers that pageviews are a valid metric, and they're going with what actually pays. I agree that it's lame and annoying, but until we get a better way to measure success that advertisers will accept, that's what we're going to have.
5) Nice try at denying ageism, Brian. I'd like to hear more about the alleged economic, social and generational gaps -- how do you cite the latter without being ageist? In my experience, magazine staffs are as diverse as they want to be. I've worked with people from all walks of life. But I know your experience comes mostly out of Wired. I just wish you had broader experience to back up that broad statement. I've seen most of the big tech publishing groups peel off as many of their forty-somethings as they can without running afoul of lawsuits; the lower paychecks of the brave new online world don't help either.
Then again, there's a difference between the business-focused media and their consumer counterparts, whether print or gadget blogs: the target audience in the first space is generally older, many in their 40s and 50s. They're spending real money and value real-world experience over the opinion of people who don't understand their needs.
6) Just like you, we're trying to throw as much as we can online as fast as we can; the problem with many blogs is that they simply pass along the press release. Although I've rewritten many a press release, any serious story warranted serious reporting. Every book I've worked for surveyed its readers annually, if not continuously, to find out what they wanted to read. But ultimately, we put together editorial packages into which the advertisers are willing to buy.
7) I made a career out of product reviews from 1997 to 2005; I know I tried to present the bigger picture, but some of my best stuff never saw daylight, because print has space limitations. Again, some of this sense of context comes from experience, and all the snark in the world won't matter. That's where us geezer bloggers are most useful.
8) We try for error-free, and we don't always get there; neither do you. (You've already been schooled about "Type-Os" so I won't belabor that point.) We don't have two months to deliver the content at most books: there's usually a day at most to turn around an article that requires actual reporting. That's because they're trying to get content up on the Web as fast as possible. Copy editors are the first to go during layoffs, and it takes a long time to train one in technical subtleties; they have their hands full making articles conform to style, and are usually the ones actually moving stories into the queue for online. As far as fact-checkers go, Brian's talking about someone who only exists at the most elite titles; in twelve years in IT publishing, I've always been responsible for checking my own facts. (As an editor, if my writer puts something down that doesn't ring true, I'll ask him/her to confirm it, or grudgingly verify it myself.) Another problem along the road to accuracy is that a proper testing and review process is expensive enough that damn few are still able to do a credible job, and that's just for the consumer stuff that you write about. (Anything that involves serious IT infrastructure is another thing entirely. When someone says they're in a position to do a proper review of enterprise IT hardware or software, he/she is probably fudging it.)
9) The problem with the writing in most tech magazines is that it's hen's-teeth-rare to have a technical expert and a brilliant writer in the same person. It's hard to teach a good writer the subtleties of tech, but almost impossible to turn a skilled geek into a good writer. The other problem is that at many books, line editing is often done by junior staff, instead of people with an adequate background.
10) You couldn't be more mistaken: I've never worked with a book that didn't practice some form of collaborative, cross-title journalism. "Synergizing" with other titles in a group is second nature today; it's the idea of sending readers to direct competitors that gives us the heebie-jeebies. Aggregation online is something most tech journals accepted years ago; print-based aggregation is possible and has a long history, but you're right, it's very limited.
11) The pros and cons of the dead-tree editions have already been picked apart.
Lord knows, print has its problems, but Brian managed to spend an awful lot of time complaining about things that are inherent to print, rather than acknowledging that almost all tech magazines today are focused on the Web first, with print surviving for those few titles where it's a necessary part of the business model. It doesn't help that Brian ignores that Mike was speaking to a business IT audience about gadget blogs, and it's not like he called out Brian, or Gizmodo, by name. So I don't really understand Brian's vitriol, racism and ageism. Let's face it, if I said "I can't relate to young Asian guys," I'd never work in this business again. But I guess he gets a free pass, thanks to Gawker Media's reputation for snark.
The following is a late draft of a posting that's awaiting moderation at Gizmodo. I don't know if Brian has the guts to post this or not on his site, so here it is for your enjoyment, with references to Brian's laundry list:
I don't even know why I'm bothering, since print magazines are dropping faster than banks. But as someone who hates to see misinformation, a technophile across four decades and a twenty-five year veteran of IT publishing who's worked for everyone meaningful except Conde Nast and Ziff, I have a few things to add to the conversation.
0) Mike's article was in Computerworld (a book I know well, though one I've never worked for) and I can tell you that he's not writing for the Engadget/Gizmodo audience. He's writing for high-end business IT, the people who spend millions of dollars a year on kit and services.
1) Of course print titles are going with blogs; the news operation is online-first for almost everybody, because that's the best way to make it work. It's always going to take longer to get something into print than online, unless the publication gets in bed with the vendor and gets early access. This is immutable -- production and mechanical deadlines are notoriously unforgiving. When you look around, it's clear that a print presence for tech is a luxury; we're just ahead of the curve in this industry.
2) Every company pressures the press to ignore things; some of us are better at resisting it than others. Personally, I've taken a few controversial stances along the way; I've never had my bosses tell me that a story was off-limits, even if it meant pissing off our biggest advertiser.
3) Charging for print subscriptions is strictly for the consumer market; the business IT books such as Computerworld do it all by controlled circulation and yearly qualification of the subscriber base. Traditionally, subscriptions have merely covered the costs of production and distribution: paper, ink and postage. The problem we face today is that ad revenues for online don't cover the cost of a proper news operation; print advertising has made up the difference. If you don't have a print component, that money has to come from somewhere, whether it's an event business, consulting, or overseas licensing of the magazine's brand.
4) This problem is common to most media sites, and only some of it is a limitation of the CMSes they use. There's a business angle as well: they've finally convinced advertisers that pageviews are a valid metric, and they're going with what actually pays. I agree that it's lame and annoying, but until we get a better way to measure success that advertisers will accept, that's what we're going to have.
5) Nice try at denying ageism, Brian. I'd like to hear more about the alleged economic, social and generational gaps -- how do you cite the latter without being ageist? In my experience, magazine staffs are as diverse as they want to be. I've worked with people from all walks of life. But I know your experience comes mostly out of Wired. I just wish you had broader experience to back up that broad statement. I've seen most of the big tech publishing groups peel off as many of their forty-somethings as they can without running afoul of lawsuits; the lower paychecks of the brave new online world don't help either.
Then again, there's a difference between the business-focused media and their consumer counterparts, whether print or gadget blogs: the target audience in the first space is generally older, many in their 40s and 50s. They're spending real money and value real-world experience over the opinion of people who don't understand their needs.
6) Just like you, we're trying to throw as much as we can online as fast as we can; the problem with many blogs is that they simply pass along the press release. Although I've rewritten many a press release, any serious story warranted serious reporting. Every book I've worked for surveyed its readers annually, if not continuously, to find out what they wanted to read. But ultimately, we put together editorial packages into which the advertisers are willing to buy.
7) I made a career out of product reviews from 1997 to 2005; I know I tried to present the bigger picture, but some of my best stuff never saw daylight, because print has space limitations. Again, some of this sense of context comes from experience, and all the snark in the world won't matter. That's where us geezer bloggers are most useful.
8) We try for error-free, and we don't always get there; neither do you. (You've already been schooled about "Type-Os" so I won't belabor that point.) We don't have two months to deliver the content at most books: there's usually a day at most to turn around an article that requires actual reporting. That's because they're trying to get content up on the Web as fast as possible. Copy editors are the first to go during layoffs, and it takes a long time to train one in technical subtleties; they have their hands full making articles conform to style, and are usually the ones actually moving stories into the queue for online. As far as fact-checkers go, Brian's talking about someone who only exists at the most elite titles; in twelve years in IT publishing, I've always been responsible for checking my own facts. (As an editor, if my writer puts something down that doesn't ring true, I'll ask him/her to confirm it, or grudgingly verify it myself.) Another problem along the road to accuracy is that a proper testing and review process is expensive enough that damn few are still able to do a credible job, and that's just for the consumer stuff that you write about. (Anything that involves serious IT infrastructure is another thing entirely. When someone says they're in a position to do a proper review of enterprise IT hardware or software, he/she is probably fudging it.)
9) The problem with the writing in most tech magazines is that it's hen's-teeth-rare to have a technical expert and a brilliant writer in the same person. It's hard to teach a good writer the subtleties of tech, but almost impossible to turn a skilled geek into a good writer. The other problem is that at many books, line editing is often done by junior staff, instead of people with an adequate background.
10) You couldn't be more mistaken: I've never worked with a book that didn't practice some form of collaborative, cross-title journalism. "Synergizing" with other titles in a group is second nature today; it's the idea of sending readers to direct competitors that gives us the heebie-jeebies. Aggregation online is something most tech journals accepted years ago; print-based aggregation is possible and has a long history, but you're right, it's very limited.
11) The pros and cons of the dead-tree editions have already been picked apart.
Labels: death of print, fail, media, professional suicide
posted by PJ at 7:43 PM
0 comments
