Buzz Off

Good luck well disguised.

The regional free paper Local Buzz, which bills itself as The Pioneer Valley's Online Journal of Culture, Commerce and Humor made a major announcement this week. They are literally living up to their slogan by killing the print version of their project and existing now purely online. Here is the key talent behind Local Buzz, jokingly posing with musical instruments. 

Local Buzzers Greg Saulmon, Josh Thayer and Bill Peters

While this may seem like a logical extension of its mission, the statement by editor Greg Saulmon sounds wistful in parts, even to the point of suggesting something bad has happened.

If you were reading these words in print, you'd be reading the last physical issue of Local Buzz that will hit the streets. We are in the process of converting to an online-only publication. It's a challenging process, but it's ultimately one that will offer many opportunities for us to explore new ways of storytelling, and to build on the idea of "collaborative journalism" that we presented as one of the resolutions in our 01.08 issue.

I'd said from the beginning that I ultimately saw Local Buzz becoming a Web site that also published a newspaper, rather than following the obligatory newspaper-with-static-Web-presence model. I'll admit that I didn't expect that evolution to happen quite so suddenly. But, as my great-great-grandmother once told me, "When life gives you lemons, squeeze them into the eyes of your enemies." The time to innovate is now, and we're going to give it our best shot.

Okay, but I don't see any lemons! It gets worse:

Some words of gratitude are in order: to the advertisers who've supported us and allowed us to present these stories; to our contributors, who've given us far more amazing writing, photography and ideas than I could've hoped for, and who believed in what we were trying to do; and, most of all, to our readers. I hope you've enjoyed this little window into the region we call home, and I hope you'll continue to follow our online exploration of what it means to live in the Pioneer Valley.

That reads like an obituary! Let's clear the air here with a quote from blogger Jeff Jarvis:

"Print is where words go to die."

If the internet is the future of all media, the sooner one embraces that future the brighter that future will be for anyone who makes their living writing. Yet it is writers who often seem the most reluctant to make the transition. It's as if they feel that being online, as opposed to being in print, is somehow a step down. This despite the fact that the internet, with its global reach, far surpasses the distributive power of any publication. I hate to say it, but I think some of the hesitation is pure ego.

The old dying media system was extremely elitist. In order to communicate to a mass audience in the pre-internet days you had to have access to expensive technology. You had to have a printing press, or a broadcasting tower, and all the technical know-how, licenses and unionized employees that implied. That meant 99% of the public could not print an article or go on television or on the radio, making those who did have such access enormously powerful, namely the reporters and writers who worked for the people who owned the printing presses and broadcast towers.

They could decide what people read. They could decide what people saw. They could decide what people heard. What's news? What they said was news. What matters? They'll let you know. The relationship in the old media was of a small elite talking down to a mass audience that lacked any means of communicating in the same mass way. Therefore there was a real status to being a media person, since you had a voice nobody else had, no one of course except your other friends in the media priesthood, a membership you had to purchase with a pricey college degree.

But that's all over.

I have a friend who used to be a local music critic. His job epitomized the special status of the media priesthood. When he went to musical events everyone kissed his ass. The management of the club where the band was playing wanted to make sure he had a good seat, because a positive review in the paper would bring in more customers. The manager might even send a few rounds of free drinks over to my friend's table. The band itself couldn't wait to talk to my friend, since a good review in the paper would help their career. They would ask him to come backstage and meet all the members of the band and of course there would be partying people hanging around as well who all too willing to include him..

My friend got all this special treatment because of all the customers (and my friend the critic never paid) he was the only one among the people in the room whose opinion mattered. If everyone in the audience loved the show, but the critic did not, then the whole Valley would hear that the show was bad. That was power, a power so pervasive he didn't really consciously recognize he had it until it slipped away.

When the internet came along my friend was no longer the only one in the room with a voice. The fans, the fanatical fans who know all the details of the band's history and were far more expert on the group than my friend could ever be, were writing reviews of the local shows that far surpassed what he could do in an eight paragraph review in the newspaper. The paper printed one picture from the show, not taken by the critic of course, as union rules required that a separate person, a staff photographer, do that. The fans took their own pictures and put dozens up on their blogs. The fans in the blogosphere could collectively cover a show in far greater depth than what any newspaper critic could do. Audiences didn't need critics anymore, the audience itself were the voices that mattered.

When my friend lost his job in a round of cutbacks designed to keep his paper afloat a little while longer, he said to me bitterly, "The internet has ruined everything!" Well, I guess if you're still paying off the loans on that journalism degree, only to see some local blogger who now has a readership bigger than your dying newspaper, that can seem pretty discouraging.

 However, if you put aside the ego disappointment and just embrace the new medium, the internet offers a writer far more freedom and economic opportunities than the old media did. If you are good, then you can attract an audience online. If you can attract an audience then you can sell that audience to advertisers. You can work without an editor and you get to keep the money from the ads for yourself. From a writer's perspective, what's there not to love about that?

On the other hand, it's change and change is scary. You could be lazy at newspapers. Somebody usually told you what story to cover, relieving you of the responsibility of finding a topic. Somebody else took the pictures. Somebody else took care of the profit side of things. For a long time journalism didn't change very much. You first learned how to function in a newsroom culture by working for your college paper, and the lessons you learned would serve you well in every newsroom you ever worked in for the rest of your life. Now the newsroom is dying, the modern media worker works from their home computer, gathers their stories on their own, takes their own pictures and video and sells their own ads - or has the Great God Google sell ads for them. We are all publishers. We are all photographers. We all broadcast on YouTube. We all sell ads. We are all media now.

So buck up Local Buzz people! Being kicked into cyberspace is like being told your family fortune, formerly invested in the Titanic, has now been invested in the Space Shuttle. In the race into cyberspace you're ahead of the New York Times, which eventually will have no choice but to follow you there. Take advantage of being ahead of the curve. Don't waste energy yearning for an elitist media that is dying, and deserves to die. 

 

Some people said they thought I was being a little too snarky when I pointed out the absence of many black-skinned attendees at the Obama for President rally in Amherst yesterday. After all, everyone knows that aside from the students, the population of Amherst consists primarily of rich white people. To make amends here is a picture of downtown Amherst's African restaurant Bakus which as you can see is prominently displaying an Obama sign in its window. 

This afternoon there were ten or so people using the new ice skating rink at Amherst's Kendrick Park. Pretty much every time I go by there are at least few people on it, so I guess you would have to characterize the project as a success. 

Finally, Amherst singer/songwriter Will Adams has a new video out, with images from the mighty Connecticut River.