Week Of April 3, 2006 - Mon / Wed / Fri

April 3, 2006

Life In The Bubble

More more more more more is less.

About eight and a half years ago, it struck me that there was a hole in the entertainment journalism world and that was a daily column about more than gossip, but about the business, how the business worked, and what was going on here, there, and everywhere.

I was working for both TNT's roughcut.com, one of fewer than 100,000 web sites in existence at the time, and for Entertainment Weekly, which had just about come to dominate (with no help from me) the showbiz news in four squares or less business. US Magazine was still competing with People, not The Star. Harry Knowles was the only real movie news name on the web. DreamWorks was about to release its first film. And I didn't really know the people who I was reporting on. I just knew what they did publicly.

Things change.

I still love much of what I do, but my perspective is quite different. When Laura Rooney and I started construction on Movie City News, we had found some open land, much as when I started The Hot Button at roughcut. We tilled the soil. We found some remarkably important and committed contributors. And with the help of Oscar Fever, we established a landmark.

But as The Hot Button had created Jeff Wells as a web columnist and the odd balance of the daily column's voice and the AICN voice set the stage for many other efforts to develop strong voices about movies, MCN's oxygen has helped feed a bubble in which we now find ourselves.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not claiming to have invented the internet, columns, daily columns, or news aggregation. God knows I didn't invent or encourage The Blog. The Hot Button, which I started pitched to Traditional Media five years before it came to exist online, was always meant to be a combination of Army Archerd, Jimmy Breslin, and the Wall Street Journal's money analysis. Movie City News started as "Drudge for movies" and has been a work-in-progress since Day One, as we learn our strengths and limitations.

But back to the bubble… it's driving me out of my fucking mind.

I don't mind competition. Sometimes it brings out my best. Sometimes it brings out my worst. But longevity, which really started kicking in around year five of THB and perhaps not coincidentally, with the launch of MCN, now allows me to look back at those who came to win the day and who left quietly. Their failures are filled with lessons. And the fantasy of the magical internet slingshot to deep pocket fortunes for honest people who do good work is one of the illusions that's been shattered. But still, MCN remains one of the successful true indies in the field.

That said, I am feeling as though media is going into its post-Watergate phase. I don't mean to pick on The New York Times here (even though I so often kick them for specific mistakes and choices), but the truth is, Jayson Blair was the Mainstream Media Watergate. It wasn't so much the stories he faked, but the fact that the company didn't know and that the public's unwavering trust in The Paper of Record started to waver. If you can' trust The Times, who can you trust? And, as in a perfect storm, the birth of the blog - yes, the actual blog and not every site on the web, which are now under a verbal blanket as "blogs" - there were more than a few voices that were able to reach thousands of selective readers and to stir the pot further.

Mainstream Media has evolved into Traditional Media as the threat of internet delivery of news and information destroying the structure of what was the mainstream just a few years ago. And in the process, in the chase for the audience, TM has lowered its standards. Oh the irony. The magical, impenetrable armor started to dissolve because the audience discovered that there were hollow patches in the metal… hollow patches that were always there but that were well disguised. And the answer to this problem, to those in charge of protecting the armory, is to thin the armor even more in certain areas… let the audience see some skin… they love seeing all that skin and no apparent armor on the internet!

Meanwhile, Internet Media is learning a lesson too. You need some armor. The illusion of being naked is very attractive, but if you want to grow, you need to have the protection of some heavy metal. We all talk quietly among ourselves about how awkward it may be for Rotten Tomatoes to be owned by News Corp or Cinematical by Time-Warner, but it doesn't get discussed publicly too often. And there is no direct indication of those built-in conflicts showing up in the content right now, just as any assumption that Harry Knowles' business dealings with Viacom and Paramount being Ain't It Cool's biggest advertiser leads to content changes is only speculative and often proven false.

But I digress…

We are in the post-Watergate phase because Traditional Media isn't blindly trusted anymore. The perceived counterculture, represented by the web, appears ascendant. And both sides envy the strengths of the other while reveling (at least, publicly) in the strengths they possess.

The result, however, has come to be a sameness, both on and off the web, that is making my head hurt. Some people are describing this as progress. Not me.

What I see is that the media bubble is becoming just another variation of the wire service or the New York Times being the assignment desk for everyone. Page Six is now "assigning" stories to the New York Times… sometimes. But most significantly, the limbo stick for the stickiness of a story is getting lower and lower. And the stickiness asserts itself more widely than ever and in greater depth. And then, the trip to obscurity is shorter and more intense than ever.

The hunger for fresh meat is so intense and the subsequent news is so lacking in news that we are losing our ability to define what news really is.

Worse, the many of us who still do know, inherently, what news is, are being pushed to forget that we have such an insight because news doesn't sell. Sizzle sells. Same as it ever was, I guess. But the sound of the sizzle is getting so loud that the meat and the pan seem like distant memories.

Thing is, I am interested in what more than a couple of people think. I am not lacking in curiosity. But the media water cooler is drowning many of us in a sea of babble.

Of course, all I can do is to try to find a working balance in my little corner of the circus. To that end, you'll see some changes around THB and MCN in the weeks and months to come.

The first change is right here. When the column started, it was six days a week. For the last couple of years, The Hot Button's been down to five columns a week and often, with the MCN columns, four a week. Some intelligent people have suggested that I simply eliminate the column and stick to the blog. Others have suggested that THB is a blog. Taking a step back, I have had to look at what The Hot Button is and why it should - or should not - stand alone as it chugs towards its ninth birthday.

My answer is to take the column down to three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. My plan is to write the three columns each week on one overall theme, each with a slightly differing perspective. In the meanwhile, The Hot Blog will become the place to find other reviews and commentary on a daily basis. And of course, there will be supplementary pieces written specifically for Movie City News.

I have been very proud to maintain THB as a daily for all of these years, the only one of its kind. But the daily grind has expanded into a part of all of our lives with the relentlessness of the web. And in order to differentiate between a column and a blog, the column must adapt.

READER OF THE DAY: Buffalo Bri writes: "Web 2.0 apps are being created everyday, new site functionality appearing, what is the future of The Hot Button? There has to be a university near you, use their slave labor, err students to start you on a path. What can Poland do for you (and that Wells will ripoff three months later)?

Bush is evil for messing with NASA, but so is CBS and Variety. The same ethic-challenging motives 60 Minutes uncovered from the Bush admin, which led to rewriting NASA research papers, should apply to them. Variety forced to squash a positive piece on Howard Stern becuase Leslie Mooves threatens to stop running ads in that mag? Peter Bart always seems like a lightweight on your favorite Sunday Morning Shootout program. I think I learn more on what is going on with the entertainment industrial complex (the E.I.C) from your site than anything he says or from Guber. Can't wait until the original Stern piece gets leaked and we can compare it to the negative one Stern got instead. Someone is opening the podbay doors.

Find me one Harvard Law Professor who wouldnt watch Closer the day it came out after having had Natalie Portman as a student? Harvard doesnt change the man, he is a man, damnit! Shit, I bet he has the fastest internet porn pipe out there and downloaded a screener.

Anyone really use McDonald's free wi-fi? Could fast food mayonaise be the best cure for constipation?

I never answered the question you had a year ago on your column about technology we would want and use. You were talking about new technology and how its changing the entertainment world and how much we would be willing to pay for devices. I got such a device, but it takes skill to get it to a desired state."

E Me: I am hoping that the change in teh THB will schedule will also inspire in you (and me) a return to the tradition of Reader of The Day. But it's really up to you…