October 24, 2005

I wasn't planning on writing more on the future of information dissemination this week. But then I read Ken Auletta's New Yorker piece on the Los Angeles Times and I felt compelled to continue swimming through that water a little longer.

The thing that really struck me was this comment from John Carroll regarding the use of newsgathering resources from other Tribune Company papers:

"If we decide that we are not going to cover the world ourselves, we will become a second tier paper."

And that, right there, is why the wheels will inevitably fall off of the print news system as we know it now.

There is a great and improved future out there for all forms of media, including significant, if incremental, growth. But the enemy of this future is greed and ego.

I will limit myself to the entertainment side, since that is what I really know ... If the Tribune Company wanted to become the most important news media company in the world in the next year, the door is open.

Conversations about synergy have been blurred by the nightmare of it - that it is all about economies of scale and interference or even the idea that it is just about cross marketing of businesses. But there is a potential upside to synergy: Greater resources being put forth towards the achievement of quality which, in turn, leads to commercial and critical success.

Just looking at the half-dozen Tribune newspapers in the top 50 markets, the asset base is enormous. If you accumulated all of that entertainment reporting and critical talent on one Tribune supersite, it would be, undeniably, one of the most important entertainment outlets in the world from day one.

Now without effective editorial leadership, it might not thrive. And if the corporation tried to make a significant reduction in those resources across the country, the slow inevitable slide towards a new form of mediocrity would be inevitable.

There are local stories, and local papers should - and need to - use their resources to cover those properly in order for a media player to be important in each town it publishes in. Additionally, one would expect strong departments from certain papers based on regional relationships. However, the amount of interest in media stories in, say, Chicago, that is shown by people reading Movie City News or GreenCine Daily or the like is every bit as significant, if not more so, than it might be in the local stories of readers.

As I find myself repeating, there is already so much access that we never get to engage all the media opportunities we wish we could. I want more than a guide to what I can do this weekend. Reading the dominant paper in a town the size of L.A., I want to know what is going on in the museums of New York, Chicago, London, Berlin, etc. If I limited my sense of world cinema to what I can see in Los Angeles, I would have a limited view of the world, indeed.

This speaks to the mindset that brought us regional coding on DVDs. It is the past. Not only is anyone who has the money and the deeper interest in international cinema already in possession of a region-free DVD player, but with a current understanding of a mature DVD market, there are tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, not being made by film funders and filmmakers annually because of the system as it exists.

The expansion of the world market is only dangerous if your business does not offer a real alternative to the pirates and poachers of the world. We do not live in a world of giddy thievery. The Chinese illegal DVD market started first as a true black market, in danger of being shut down by a government not in favor of the creeping American cultural influence. After years of the market turning gray, the challenge for American distributors is to re-train the consumer. The smart idea now being experimented with is to offer legally distributed DVDs with only a marginal increase in the price of gray market DVDs, but with the promise of increased quality and extras. In fact, Asia is the one market in which high definition DVD may be a significant success because the core quality in gray market DVDs has been so poor for so long that consumers may be willing to make the leap…but still, likely only at a small price increase.

The Tribune Company is faced with a transitional moment in its talent pool in entertainment, particularly in the film critics' chairs. Michael Wilmington is "taking a break" in Chicago. Ken Turan is nearing retirement age in Los Angeles. There is no "B" critic in Chicago and the #2 here in Los Angeles, Carina Chocano, is not likely to remain a film critic for very long. John Anderson has been reduced to being "a regular contributor" to Newsday. So that leaves The Baltimore Sun's Michael Sragow as the highest profile full-time critics in the company who could possibly be marketed with an eye to greater fame a few years from now.

What the L.A. Times and other papers are scared to let go of is not their big name critics, it is the "The L.A. Times says…" shtick. But my friends and foes… we are at the end of that time in media history. The New York Times still has real bottom-line influence in the art film world of the biggest city in this country… but that's about it. The L.A. Times less so… especially since there is such a small art house business here and because neither Turan or Chocano are really associated with art house thinking and because Kevin Thomas has been so generous for so long that he is no longer taken seriously, except by publicists clinging to, "The L.A. Times said…"

Now, imagine the increased influence if the Tribune Company had its three or four top critics writing about the three big new movies of each weekend and complete coverage of everything else. I know that consensus between Wilmington, Turan, Sragow and either Anderson or Jan Stuart and maybe Roger Moore in Orlando would be a compelling to me… perhaps inspiring me to read all five.

If you want to spin your own head, check out the Hartford Courant's use of reviews, not from its sister Tribune Company papers, but from the Washington Post syndicate or from the AP wire! But that brings up another real issue… there doesn't appear to be a lead film critic in Hartford. And that speaks to the fear. If the Tribune decided it could live with just two or three critics to cover the entire country, it would mean - as layoffs reached beyond film critics - a lot of jobs lost. But it would also be the Tribune's thoughtless form of suicide. The future is about choice. And those who limit choice do so at their own peril… whether by cutting things too thin or by resisting the expansion of internal competition inside these media conglomerates.

What if every day, Monday through Friday, a trip to the Tribune site delivered an insightful commentary on film by a writer in one of five different cities, Patrick Goldstein owning his L.A. Tuesdays?

I've got bad news for everyone involved… the Fall Preview edition of the Los Angeles Times or The New York Times is nothing but a bad habit about now. When Entertainment Weekly does a seasonal preview, there are only two things that matter… the cover - which sits on the newsstand for a week - and a photo on the inside that is either a first look or a major surprise of some kind.

If a studio has a fall movie due, say, in November, and they want to have a real impact in November, they now have to find 10 outlets or so with at least five different styles of coverage to have any hope at a lasting impact. Of course, that's not what happens. The top half dozen or so outlets plan a seasonal preview so they have more advertising once a quarter and then muscle the studios into giving them access so the studios don't "miss out." And then they get the same boring story six times. And it might as well be a TV spot on Desperate Housewives… actually, the spot would have more impact.

I'll tell ya something else… A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis are the top critical team in the country now. But they should not be blogging. We don't need to know either of their informal thoughts. They are critics and should be funneling all of those thoughts into the work. But that doesn't mean that major papers shouldn't be blogging. But when they do, they need to have talent doing the work that is no encumbered by the weight of other corporate responsibilities… including editorial concerns about publicists or advertising. That is the nature of blogging. Use it, but don't confuse it.

Taking a hard turn, the question of the print media also speaks to the saga of the newly released Video iPod. I brought up the ViPod last week and gave a little bit too much of a short shrift. It is, indeed, insane to think that a major business in $2 music videos or TV shows to watch on iPods or even on a computer in QT, is forthcoming. However, what struck me as I wandered through the Video iPod opportunity at the Apple store is that this is a real opportunity to monetize - to some degree - the promotional music video that up until now has been a TV giveaway. It is not about selling music videos. It is about promoting the format shift in media. If I can buy the latest Fiona Apple CD via iTunes, pay a few dollars less than in a store because of all the money saved by not having to burn, ship, and retail an actual CD, and then, for another buck or two, could get all the music videos associated with or due to be associated with that CD, I would pay the money. All the better if I could watch the music video on my computer or on my Video iPod. Even better if the music video started playing on my Video iPod without any extra effort, when the song came up on the ViPod.

And while I am sure some of you will argue the details, I think you get the point. It's about an additional benefit, not selling me more stuff. But in doing the first, you accomplish the other… not necessarily in the dollar amounts you crave. Buy hey, fuck off. You're making music videos to promote your album and it got me interested in buying the album and now you want to charge me to watch the ad? Are you nuts?

Speaking of which… why aren't trailers on the Apple site available for ViPod download for free? Uh, idiocy? If I'm Paramount and I have Aeon Flux coming, I am DESPERATE to get kids carrying around a trailer or featurette around on their new ViPod. A kid passing around that machine is better than a trailer about now. If you are targeting young, by the end of X-Mas this year, that ViPod is one of your top fifteen media resources.

Even in the Apple stores now… the ViPods on display have nothing on them but an old Fantastic Four trailer. Yawn. How has the deal to be the product on the sample ViPods not been done?

But I digress…

The same old thinking is also what has led to the new disregard for theatrical revenues. I do think that it has subsided somewhat as the DVD market for movies has matured into a noticeable slowdown. Because the elder statesmen on the business don't understand the internet or other forms of content delivery that are less than a decade old, the success of DVD sell-thru and a minor glitch in box office revenues this year is responded to with baby-and-the-bathwater hysteria.

But it is not either/or.

Newspapers and internet news are not either/or.

You can't unring a bell.

And you can't underestimate the power of perceived value that old media still brings.

But the trick of the new media mix is going to be to know what traditions to embrace and which traditions to jettison. Old media has to cling to being better at what it does, its professionalism, than anyone else. And it also has to understand the power of youthful energy and passion.

It is true, as Dean Baquet says in the New Yorker piece, that "it's not always our job to give readers what they want." It is, in my opinion, the efforts to give the readers what they want that has been so detrimental to both the New York and L.A. Times. We don't need the US Magazine section in our major dailies.

It's a bit like someone starting therapy. People who allow others to control them are often encouraged to assert more control, to be more verbal. But the first months of that process can be brutal, because someone who has been passive suddenly seems like a self-absorbed control freak to those close to them. The hope is that eventually the patient matures into a place of moderation.

Right now, the internet is an enemy, corporate thinking is an enemy, change of any kind, really, is an enemy. But the incremental mindset that follows from this thinking endangers the media far more seriously. Change will come, no matter what. It is bigger than choice. So the only choice is to seriously consider how to make the best of change, not only for selfish reasons, but why not… embrace the selfish reasons!

E-ME.