Slashdot Mirror
Middle Media
Since the rise of electronic media like TV and the Net, the idea of New and Old media has become entrenched in the culture. Conventional wisdom says that the former will ultimately and completely replace the latter.
That doesn't seem to be happening, though interactive media are ascending rapidly, and the influence and monopoly of traditional media have diminished. But there are signs all over of a new, hybrid, and probably permanent Middle Media.
Old media are generally defined as newspapers, magazines, publishing and network TV, controlled by small groups of gatekeepers who make decisions about what's news and what's not. New media, by contrast, are interactive, with choices made by their consumers, and they're digitally or electronically transmitted. In general, they are much freer and more opinionated.
But technology and the way people use it is so inherently unpredictable that that rigid distinctions between the two are becoming less useful each day. Most "old" media now have "new" appendages, adjuncts and outlets, especially on the Web. And the people using new media still acquire information and use culture in traditional forms - they go to megaplexes, read magazines, follow books.
The idea of "new" or "old" media may not hold too much longer, just Middle Media that combine elements of both, giving information-seekers many more options.
One small but telling example was reported in American Demographic magazine's March issue, which reported that dot.com companies - Garden.com, Wine.com, Tavolo.com and jewelry retailer Miadora.com, among others -- are successfully experimenting with print catalogues. People buy online, but they want to see some paper and pictures first.
"There's something about flipping through a catalog that can't be replaced by the online experience," says Rich Fazekas, research director at W.A. Dean & Associates, a San Francisco catalog consulting firm that's just completed an informal study of e-commerce players launching catalogs. "If [e-tailers] want to grow as a sales channel, catalogs can be a vital part of their business."
Another indication of an emerging Middle Media is the fact that the journalistic move from paper to e-news has gone from a trickle to a flood. Reporters are leaving newsrooms all over the country to work for online information sites. These reporters, leaving papers like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and smaller papers in chains like Gannett, are bringing traditional journalistic sensibilities to e-news, which until now has been much more free and raucous than the offline press.
Just a few years ago, most retailers thought catalogs would disappear as consumers browsed through graphically - advanced online displays.
The rise in catalogs in conjunction with dot.coms is interesting because it demonstrates again that people are often less absolute in their technological choices than the techno-pundits and seers predict.
The music industry is hysterical about online music distribution, but there is little or no evidence that their "property" is being hi-jacked en masse by digital thieves. Last week, the industry announced it earned a record $14+ billion in l999. Some newspapers - USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post - are belatedly realizing that the Net doesn't necessarily replace them, but can often offer new venues for breaking news, new vehicles for identifying and acquiring subscribers, and can generally promote interest in their existing formats. They may no longer hold monopolies on news and information, but they still have a significant slice of the pie.
In a Slashdot discussion last week about the future of newspapers, it was obvious that many people here, for example, valued print news in certain circumstances, particularly if papers would offer more focused and in-depth information on subjects like technology and culture, as well as local news.
Publishers approaching meltdown about the future of books can visit any Borders or Barnes & Noble, where salespeople constantly suggest that customers find books online, and where it's also clear that people aren't even close to giving up reading words on paper even if they also read words on computer screens. Although online book sales are growing on sites like Fatbrain, Amazon and BN.com, so are the sales of books in stores. The technological absolutism invoked by the rise of the Net - everything will go digital - is not coming to pass.
Certain information formats can offer a sensual, contextual appeal that's impossible to quantify, and was not predicted. Consumers have fiercely resisted getting newspapers or books via digitized tablets. Convenience and speed are critical measures, but not the only ones. People enjoy browsing through catalogs they can see and hold, it seems, rather than simply buying everything online. They cling to the experience of congregating at malls and in bookstores, even when many of the items sold there are readily available on the Net and the Web. Movie admissions were up sharply last year, along with music revenues, and chain bookstores made huge profits.
The symbiotic boom in catalogs and online shopping may foreshadow the way future media will work. Media may not, in fact, be old-fashioned or new-fangled, but co-dependent. E-news and information can feed off print news and information, one stimulating interest in the other.
And the form of media might vary in terms of content as well. Information about politics, for example, might always be centered around print publications -- a handful of newspapers and magazines -- which are to many people better vehicles for presenting complex issues. Music distribution seems sure to move almost completely onto the Web, along with elements of radio and TV. But even though DVDs are booming, it seems unlikely people will forego the experience of going to theaters, which are also booming. Breaking news is clearly moving exclusively to e-media, as it is fast and tailor-made for hypertext.
Other kinds of coverage -- pop culture, health, investigative reporting, strong writing -- might always remain popular to consumers on paper.
Even though that pattern seems to be emerging, the truth is, nobody knows for sure. Interactivity has become one of the most powerful ideas in media history, no longer a fad but an expectation. As much as gatekeepers, politicians and journalists hate it, it isn't going away.
People expect to contribute to and participate in their information media, and to hold pundits, columnists and other information-givers accountable for what they report, think and write.
But as Garden.com's sweet-smelling catalogs show, the boundaries between old and new media are getting tougher to find. What is visible is a new and hybrid information structure, a new media species all its own.
Is there any? What kind of a genius does it take to figure out that people don't like to change things overnight? People like to smooth things over with gradual change. I know I do, and I know most businesses do too. This isn't a "middle media", it's just two medias in one.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Publishers approaching meltdown about the future of books can visit any Borders or Barnes & Noble, where salespeople constantly suggest that customers find books online, and where it's also clear that people aren't even close to giving up reading words on paper even if they also read words on computer screens. Although online book sales are growing on sites like Fatbrain, Amazon and BN.com, so are the sales of books in stores. The technological absolutism invoked by the rise of the Net - everything will go digital - is not coming to pass.
I doubt very much that books will become obsolete for quite a long time, even when the E-book finally becomes a reality for consumers. While some texts, particularly scientific textbooks, could do with the concept of hyperlinked sections, the majority of books would gain no real benefit to being digitised. Yes, it might be nice to search a book for a particular passge, but it's hardly essential for the enjoyment of the book.
While I love computers, there's nothing more frustrating than trying to read something that's more than 100 or so lines on a monitor. It just doesn't feel right and hurts your eyes, even on this brand-new 19" monitor. And I don't think curling up on your bed with your E-book will take off.
And I'm not even going to go in to the phenomenon of toilet books - you know, those books full of easily digestible sections which sit in the bathroom for when you need a quick read :)
how about indymedia? :-) :-)
adbusters
the onion
would slashdot be considered an alternative media source? probably?
anyone else got some good outside-the-mainstream media sources?
I don't know about you, but i still get all my news from everything 2
no
OK, so according to Jon Katz, we now have some kind of "middle media," where the old (print) media and the new (electronic) media have somehow merged together.
Four words: been there, done that.
This "middle media" you rant about has existed long before you started getting flamed on Slashdot Jon. Take a look at buying from TV. Home Shopping Network and QVC have been doing this "middle media" stuff for a while now. Rather than leaf through a bulky catalog for your favorite Hawaiian shirt, you can turn on the TV and see that shirt right there...they even have someone to walk around in it so you can see just how it looks! If you don't want to buy it from TV, you can always visit their store (QVC has one in Lancaster PA) and buy the same shirt you saw on TV. And yes, they do have catalogues to browse through. There you go, you have TV and the print media working together, an idea they've been doing since the mid 1980's.
And NOW you're popping up telling us that there's some new "middle media" that we should all be bowing down to? What rock have you been living under?
Ever wonder why a lot of people on Slashdot don't like you Jon? This article is just one reason. But feel free to enlighten me, as I'd be interested in what you have to say.
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
doesn't mean Katz is dumb. So Hypermedia has been around for years. Does that mean Katz can't call it Middle Media and write a piece to generate discussion on this topic? So it's obvious that books and catalogs and CDs are still selling. I know this - I still use and buy all of them. That doesn't mean I can't have these facts pointed out to me every once in a while and actually be forced to think about why they're still selling.
Discussion and comments and arguments are what this site is about, in addition to news. So if it's not news (at least to some of us), why can't we just accept that and carry on with the discussion, comments and arguments?
Go ahead, moderate this down as inflammatory or something. I'm just speaking my mind. Think about it, and it might make sense.
Eruantalon
Eruantalon
The Annals of Middle-earth
Someone's obviously mastered ASCII painting, and has an agenda it seems to boot...
As far as Jon's article, though, he has a good point. The e-companies are discovering that the key to success is to take the best of the old models and marry them to the new. Remember Amazon, and their intent to be a "virtual company", with no inventories? They gave up on that and have been burning cash to build warehouses and shipping facilities, allowing them to control the process better. The e-tailers who are now branching into catalogs have discovered that to rely on on-line only is to leave money on the table.
The place for e-only commerce is in a small, specialty marketplace that is so focused as to make the Internet the only practical, affordable way to reach your target audience. Thinkgeek and Copyleft are two good examples of specialty businesses that probably couldn't succeed in a traditional catalog or retail world, because the overhead costs would be far too high to justify the limited audience. The classic examples like the hot sauce company that went online and had sales that took off (I forget the company, but this was some time ago) and the Copylefts of the world are the best ones for a purely e-commerce based approach.
In reality, Amazon needs warehouses and customer service reps, the New York Times needs (and can make money from) online newsfeeds, and MicroWarehouse needs to have online ordering from their catalog (the closest postal equivalent to spam I've seen) in order to maximize their revenues. Smart companies like Ingram Micro make it easier for companies to do business in this hybrid world with fulfilment services and private-label direct shipping. Shippers like FedEx and UPS are more valuable too in this new economic model because in many cases they will be the only actual contact the customer has.
In the end, the Internet is changing the way business is done, but the smart companies use the best of the old and combine it with the new to make more money. Money is a Good Thing, especially when you're making it...
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
It seems to me to make much more sense to keep dividing and criticizing media along more traditional lines:
The forced format of the medium. Books have usually been text, magazines now have lots of pictures, newspapers are moving to more graphical formats, television is tied to pictures, and the Web might soon bring everything at once. "Old" and "New" makes no sense here; everyone wants to convey information in a way that makes the most sense for the information itself and for those who consume it.
The number of people who can be involved. Books are generally very prohibitive; they are usually written by just one person. Newspapers, magazines and TV programs are often the result of collaboration - but they do not allow serious, prolonged interaction. The Web permits dialogue, often with amazing results (like Slashdot, or the new online academic journals). But there are always exceptions: many Web sites are top-down (without dialogue) and many newspapers have ample letters sections (encouraging public dialogue).
It just seems to me that calling some media old and some new is a particularly useless way of trying to dichotomize what is, in fact, a richly intricate and complex process.
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Given "Shetland ponies" and "acupunture", I got "Demystifying the Man-Animal Holistic Connection."
Given "hot grits" and "Natalie Portman", I got "Cyberfood and E-Love in the Naboo System.",
Given "school shootings" and "confused by Linux", I got "Greetings from the Hellmouth 5: When The Lack of Man Pages Causes the Info-Ignorant to go on a Geek Goth Gun Nerd Columbine Rampage."
Clearly, this is a program whose time has come. Hey, Rob, open the Katzbot source!
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
Certainly, this discussion will generate some heat, but I wouldn't call it flamebait. I don't believe that CLIs and GUIs are mutually exclusive. It is certainly possible to have systems without one or the other, but it isn't necessary. The tension between the proponents of each side come from a firm insistence that their own preferrence not be abandoned. So let's examine the merits of each and consider the implications for the print vs. electronic media issue. I think that the way I am going to twist this analogy will be counterintuitive at first, but it may shed some light.
CLIs are not inherently more flexible than GUIs. There is no reason that they necessarily must have a richer set of options than a GUI can provide. However, that is often the case. Don't flame me if your favorite GUI is easily as flexible as my favorite CLI. I not only concede that it is possible, but that it has been done. The biggest hurdle in presenting a flexible GUI is to not sacrifice the benefits that GUIs provide. The biggest one is that GUIs allow users to leverage the power of recognition over the burden of remembering.
Okay, with that out of the way, what are the benefits of a CLI interface? I'm going to talk about the Unix shell functionality as one of th best examples of a truly rich set. Primarily, a CLI puts a rich set of functionality into a form simple, flexible commands and a mechanism for combining them. The power of the Unix/Linux shell model is the ability to combine commands in useful ways, and also to script those combinations. Once scripted, they essentially become powerful new commands. I haven't seen a GUI that privdes this mechanism to script repeated operations and build up complex combinations with conditional logic. Is there one?
Now, how does this related to print versus electronic media. I would say that the scripting capability is related to the direct accessibility of electronic texts to be manipulated in various forms. E-text can be cut and pasted for quoting. I personally find it easier to translate because I can search through it for similar phrases that I have translated elsewhere. It can be transmitted faster and more flexibly than a printed book.
Printed formats are analogous to a GUI. They are designed around a set of intuitive operations. It is obvious how to determine your position in the text, how to move forward and backward, etc. They are easy to look at and read. They hide the details of how graphics were included.
Yes, I turned the analogy on its head and equated the new, electronic text, with the old, command line interfaces, and vice versa (print and GUIs). Does this possibly hint at who I think falls most naturally on each side of the two debates? I think that those of us who are used to taking control of our computers through a CLI, who are so used to data being a live thing and building filters to put it in whatever form we want, are also likely to want our text that way. I could be wrong, but if I have erred, I suspect it is in not including some people who use GUIs as flexibly. I think the reasons for choosing electronic over printed text are still present in the analogy.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I'm really surprised that noonne has yet made this observation (perhaps someone did, if so I apologise, I did skim through the responses fairly quickly)
The REAL new "middle media" is right here. Really.
Slashdot is the PERFECT example of "middle media".
Everyone seems to agree that "old media" , (and I think we're getting to hung up on defining "old media" by the FORM of physical media used to communicate the message, rather than the ORGANIZATIONAL structure used to generate the information dissemenated by that media) is not going away anytime soon. Fair enough. I would agree with that.
Problem as I see it is, with all of the vast amounts of "old media" out there and all the thousands of "new media" outlets emerging, it's simply WAY too much information for the average person who consumes information as a small subset of their normal lives to take in.
So, as I see it, in my humble opinion, the idea of a "middle media" is very much valid, and I'm convinced will emerge as a titan on not only the 'net but all forms of communication. But I define the "middle media" as a collection of somewhat specialized collators of all media, like Slashdot is for technology/Linux/techonology-politics.
A weblog of sorts, with the added benefit of INSTANT feedback in the form of truly open comments, taking what is otherwise a LONG, painful process of debating and agonizing amoung the media outlets over every story and making it a VERY fast, (in Slashdot's case a few hours) intense discussion, and then we all move on to the next story.
I'm convinced also that this model will begin to appear in print and television as well. I can TOTALLY see a "Slashdot TV" program with Taco and Hemos (or two scantily clad babes playing the roles of Taco and Hemos) burning through the best-of-the Slashdot news for the day/week, taking phone calls and adding their own pithy wit to the mix. Hell, if I lived in Michigan, I'd have already put my 10 years experience in TV to work and got them to do it by now, but I'm sure someone will soon, and it will work.
Just my 2 cents, of course.