(Posted 12/5/14 on "The Daily Beast" as a comment to news that the reliably liberal New Republic magazine will be taken over and given a rigorous digital exam!)
Notwithstanding the "Wrong-Wing" glee that the New Republic is being arguably gutted by its new digitally-savvy owner, while mourners express horrified comparisons to the bloody "Red Wedding" in the HBO series, Game of Thrones, the political viewpoint of TNR is irrelevant. We can't all subsist on a diet composed exclusively of the drivel published by Rupert Murdoch. But what IS relevant is the fact that a lot of print magazines are dying or going digital. This turn of events is as reminiscent of the current plot line on "The Newsroom" as it is the "Red Wedding," wherein a digital dynamo wants to take over the network and convert it to "infotainment."
Let's face it: "analog" news and opinion just don't cut it in the digital age, where industry moguls are mostly MBA bean-counter types, obsessed primarily with the financial bottom line. It has brutally happened in American industry, too, where the bean-counters now get to dictate the design of domestic automobiles, for example, based not upon their performance and engineering but whether or not they will turn a profit. (That is why I now drive Toyotas. Even though many are now made in the US, the design process and managerial philosophy are still not dominated by "bean-think.") In the digital world in which we now exist, the customer/reader/viewer/driver is not to be served but is to be exploited as a profit center, to be coerced into serving the interests of the businesses instead of the businesses serving them.
PLUS, we aging, mostly analog Baby Boomers are not the driving consuming force in the marketplace anymore. We are now mostly paranoid geezers waiting to die. We have been replaced by much more tech-savvy youngsters who seemingly prefer digital access, even as they are being manipulated and exploited by the bean-counters.
Oblah-di, oblah-dah.
No comments:
Post a Comment