Week Of April 16, 2007 - Mon / Wed / Fri

April 16, 2007

USE OR ABUSE

Every day it seems more and more like these are the two choices the media (especially entertainment media) is willing to make.   It doesn’t matter whether it is the Traditional Media, the Mainstream Media, or New Media.  And it is not the existence of this phenomenon that has me feeling like I am at a crossroads as a journalist - it is the relentlessness of it at this time.  Kiss or Kill has always existed.  But now it seems like am every day occurrence… a literal every day occurrence. 

I’ve been on the web for 10 years now.  I was brought into this world by an editor looking for the cache of my print credentials.  After I created a daily column for the publication, thanks to the support of my uber-boss, Scott Safon, who was the marketing topper for TNT cable, I had the freedom to experiment in the form.  For me, this was nirvana.  But being on the web, I was a “them” for a long time.  Things changed. 

When we created MCN, the dynamic changed again, as the site put us in direct competition with and in support of Traditional Media.  But the sting of tough headlines made us “them” to many in Traditional Media.  And still, there was resistance at the studios on some level. Things changed.

The launch of blogs, many of which had some of the style of the original version of this column, but also had a looser, faster nature changed things enormously.  A big part of that change was the nature of what was news and what was opinion and how they blended. 

At the same time, a spectacularly profitable business, newspapers and magazines, started being less profitable.  And even though the popular spin from Traditional Media is that they are still highly profitable, the problem with a chart trending down in this case is that there is not reason to assume that there is a bottom close at hand. 

We have already been through this process in another form of media… television news.  It’s been more than a decade since network news divisions started being degraded, budgets cut, ratings made more important.  And the result has not been the end of network news, but many of the programs that are now under their umbrella are really entertainment shows, not news shows.  There is a news element to To Catch A Predator.  But the truth is, it is a reality show gone wild.  It is a more sophisticated version of Cops, which no one has ever claimed was a news show, in great part because the Fox Network has never had a news division as such.

The difficult part of this is that one has to start with a baseline of respecting the traditions of Traditional Media.  But basic things, like Friday gross reportage on Saturday, have been actively chosen by Traditional Media as something they don’t need to cover.  The argument of “too much already” is not unfair for them to make.  But there is also an audience for this stuff that wants to be served.  And not serving it makes Traditional Media seem like Fuddy Duddy Media. 

The line keeps moving.  It’s not just Friday numbers.  It’s not just predicting the weekend grosses, which EW does, The Hollywood Reporter abandoned, and Variety refuses to get into.  But there is also a traditional of a lot of log rolling and ass kissing in Traditional Media’s coverage of Hollywood.  And that hasn’t changed.  Both the New York and Los Angeles Times are seriously hooked on Hollywood marketing money.  There are no trades without it either. 

Most of the feature stories in all of these outlets are driven by publicity needs, not any form of investigative journalism… and that includes almost everything in the trades, which play a game of “first,” but not chasing stories very hard.  Almost everything you read in a trade has been held for at least some time, since trade reporters hear rumors that are sure to be fact eventually, all the time.  But they agree to hold in the balance of power.

But again, this in particular is not a harsh comment on the trades or the two big coastal papers.  This is the nature of the relationship, build over decades with minor variations along the way and that must be acknowledged out of fairness.

My point is that it has changed, in that the competition from various media (since all major media is now online and competitive in a more aggressive way) leaves even the most significant players clamoring for ownership of any individual space in the media spotlight, online or off.  And it is making idiots of us all. 

And it’s not just people claiming exclusives that don’t exist, picking fights based on unnamed private issues, running "corrections” by obliterating previous mistakes (especially ones that are embarrassing), or simply behaving like gossip mongerers instead of journalists.  Major media is showing itself to only be able to operate at two speeds as well.

Please explain to me how we got to the point of the Los Angeles Times being desperate enough to hold onto a nasty story about whether Film Independent should have tax exempt status until the morning of the Independent Spirit Awards?  And then, please, please, please explain to me how the Los Angeles Times goes on from there to be the title sponsor of FInd’s Los Angeles Film Festival for the second straight year? 

What planet are we on?

I am not running down the LA Film Festival at this moment.  I am waiting to hear what they open and close with this year before I gag on one or both of the almost inevitably non-indie self-promoting choices.  But if you are a newspaper and you investigate an organization and throw accusatory Molotov cocktails at the group… how do you remain part of the funding mechanism of that group less than five months later?  Maybe the LAT would argue that shows how independent minded they are, church and state, and all that.  But it seems to me that the Los Angeles Times at least owes us an explanation of where the Weapons of Mass Destruction went.

On a more day-to-day level, the failure of the Los Angeles Times to regain traction as an important finder of fact in the film business (since the trades only seek to connect on that level through columnist snark) has a lot to do with the inability to find a tone that makes sense.  It has become a constant parade or Fuck or Fight.  And this is in spite of having a lot of real journalistic talent on board.

“The Blogs,” as I hate hearing web journalists referred to, are now almost all “fuck,” at least publicly.  It was painful listening to the editor of Gawker explain that she expects people not to trust what she prints.  Stories are planted all over the place, just like the gossip columns that call themselves gossip columns.  And hyperbole rules the day.  And this is what Traditional Media now aspires to, as an alternative to a daily fear of death?  Or does it make more and more journalists, like me, want to look for the cyanide?

Meanwhile, the New York Times has become the New Spin Times.  Beyond their insane rule about unnamed sources (“This person asked to be unnamed because they really didn’t want to be quoted because of a vested interest, but we have decided to trust them in spite of that acknowledged bias.”), they have become a paper where anyone who decides to go on the record is given a full and partial hearing… partial to their on-the-record comments.  The open secret in Hollywood is that the NYT can be played like a violin.

But here is how we maintain the illusion (and self-delusion). 

The studio/exec/producer/publicist gets a call from someone at the paper.  They have a bug up their ass about Rumor X, which of course, everyone in town has heard and the NYT has heard the same way, via the gossip of the self-interested.  That doesn’t make it not news.  But here is where things turn.

The ball is now in the industry player’s court.  How do they proceed?  They could get burnt either way.  Acknowledging a story can legitimize it as a story.  But if they clam up and it breaks against them, it can be worse trying to clean up the mess.

Notice how neither option has anything to do with the seeking of truth?

I feel bad, on some level, for the reporters involved with these stories.  There is a long journalistic tradition of someone going on the record meaning something.  But the problem with entertainment journalism is that there is no follow up.  In fact, most of the “follow up” comes when a journalist gets it wrong and doesn’t want to admit the mistake.  This is a huge problem with the New York Times in particular.  But, more to the point, when a movie or executive or company spins their story into the pages of the New York Times, there is often no specific cause for follow up.  Whether it’s a budget that is out of control and The Paper of Record makes look less out of control than it is or a studio that has a disastrous summer and uses The Paper to spin their losses to ends that The Paper never seems to consider, these stories become presumed fact when they are in the pages of The Paper.

And still, the New York Times has a problem, since the highest profile players in Hollywood are Manohla Dargis, the critic most feared, and David Carr, who has had a great time as The Bagger, shooting from the hip.  Personalities rule the day.  And The Paper has to figure out, eventually, what to make of it.

But the irony is that the New York Times is doing a better job of transitioning into the New Media than any other major traditional company.  (The Wall Street Journal’s standards have always been different than anyone else’s have been, though I have to admit, they have been sliding to the dark side a little ever since they launched the Weekend Journal.)

Over the last decade, my central interest has been to gather, absorb, consider, and offer as much of what is going on out there that interests me as I am capable.  But I am finding that the process of gathering leaves more and more junk in my basket.  And consuming is more and more like Super Size Me… I don’t have the liver for it… or at least, the heart.

My knowledge and my arrogance are still intact.  And when I get down to it, my love for this industry and especially the product it creates is as great as ever.  But more and more I find the conversation is about people taking positions for or against everything, sight unseen.  Less and less are the serious issues engaged at all.  We in the media conspire mindlessly with the public to create this dynamic.  And I am not quite sure what the answer is, if there is an answer at all. 

Use or abuse.  Fuck or fight.  Scream bloody murder or be ignored.  Name it any way you want. 

I love the internet.  I love the open discourse.  I love the odd democracy of it.  The idea of a Code of Conduct makes me gag, because it is not the behavior that is troubling, it is almost always the thought or lack thereof that leads to the contact that is the problem.  The surface is moving so fast that it is almost impossible to catch up.  But until we find a way to slow it back down, we will continue to wend our way towards nothingness. Or a worse fate for most journalists… irrelevance. 

Have a nice week.

E Me.

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