1. When the news media tell us stories about the world, there are good guys and bad guys. For instance, right now in New Orleans, outgoing Mayor Ray Nagin is a bad guy. However, it wasn’t too long ago that incoming Mayor Ray Nagin was a good guy.
2. I study play. And, just as there are stories in the news media about politicians, there are stories in the news media about play. Sometimes, play is a good guy: It enhances learning, creativity, and innovation. Sometimes, play is a bad guy: It’s wasteful, harmful, and disruptive.
3. In September 2009, a PBS Frontline episode told a story about how a good guy (new technology) beat up a bad guy (poor student performance). That story is called “How Google Saved a School,” and it’s an interesting story. You should watch it.
In that story, at about the 4:50 mark, we learn that the assistant principal of Intermediate School 339 in the Bronx can access a student’s laptop webcam without that student’s knowledge or permission. In the Frontline story, that new technology is a good-guy thing. Fast-forward to February 2010, and that new technology is a bad-guy thing.
The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence…The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students’ clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.
4. Politicians and play and disruptive new technologies –- like, for instance, remotely accessed webcams — are complicated things. They are not characters in a story. It may please us to think and write and read about good guys and bad guys, but it doesn’t help us learn about them. It may well be necessary to understand complicated things in complicated ways.
5. Do stories help us understand complicated things in complicated ways? Or do stories prevent us from understanding those things?
6. If you ask questions like those in #5, are you always the bad guy in the story?
This “story line” feature is the main distinction between the conventional news media (tv news, papers) preferred by older audiences, and the ‘net newser’ integrator media that a lot of younger audiences are moving toward. i think the shift for young folks is mainly due to time, availability, and the pace of information differences (and maybe ADD!). Why would i wait through a whole broadcast to hear about Shamu eating his trainer when i can skip to the clip instantly on youtube? or, why would i fumble through the NYtimes for david brooks’ column when i can read his opinion on his blog – and read 10 other opinions on the topic through my RSS feeder? See Pew study: http://www.pewinternet.org/Commentary/2008/August/Changing-news-audience-behavior.aspx
The difference between these approaches is the “Leading Story”. THere’s no leading story singled out in big headlines and color picture on an RSS feeder. The amount of news has grown too big for single 1500 word lead stories – and frankly this story-telling feature of old media is not as attractive to younger audiences who want the newest news, quicker.
SIDENOTE: One thing i dont understand about Dead Tree Newspaper websites is that they still cling to the print newspaper visual layout on their websites. i much prefer Bloomberg’s simple RSS feed look to the NYTimes cluster of crap that gets me just as lost as when i try to read an actual print paper (and, IMHO, the “appeal” of trying to navigate an actual newspaper is something shared by an older generation, and is sure to expire when they do – like shorthand from the previous generation).
Still, old media will cling to its only appeal (shared largely by older audiences), and that’s to weave their “own story” into the stories – it’s saves time that way for older viewers who would probably prefer deferring judgment to the all-knowing major media networks.
I agree with you that MSM — particularly news media — tend to foster an overly paternal attitude toward their audiences. When times are flush, this attitude can be beneficent; during other times, it’s more of a Fagin-like projection. If so, then Pink Floyd’s advice remains apt: leave them kids alone.
But my larger concern is with the story itself, divorced from its application in the media. As a folk theory of causes, the story has served us well throughout our evolutionary history, but, as the world around us changes, the inability of the story to describe that world accurately becomes increasingly clear. Yet, while we might realize the faults of the story, we still carry in our heads a predilection for it, much like instinctive preferences for, say, chocolate or sex.
I think this is as true of the young as the old.
Sorry about double-commenting, but my girlfriend sent me an article from the National Journal that i thought was relevant to this discussion, “The Pseudosphere” by W. Powers: http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/me_20080416_7479.php
In it Powers discusses “pseudo-news” stories in political campaigns, and how the MSM has tendencies and is geared to “implant” and weave insignificant but arguably insignificant “threads” to the major narratives. Powers makes some interesting points:
“Everything happens quickly on this stage, and the scenery changes all the time. One moment we’re in Bosnia watching a welcome ceremony—and watching it, and watching it (these shows employ repetition for effect). Next we’re somewhere in Pennsylvania, where the drama “Bittergate” is unfolding. And so on.
The plays are all “real,” in that they are based on actual events. But in the hands of the producers, real quickly becomes unreal, and facts fade into insignificance. In the end, what happened matters less than our feelings about what happened, and how the actors “handled” their assigned roles.
“Welcome to the Pseudo-Sphere, a term coined a few years ago by reporter and blogger Garance Franke-Ruta, now with The Washington Post. It refers to the synthetic, manufactured nature of a certain kind of mega-story that has been dominating the campaign coverage. The phrase echoes both “pseudo-environment,” Walter Lippmann’s term for the world of mediated information, and the “pseudo-events” that Daniel Boorstin famously defined back in 1961…
“But the Pseudo-Sphere is not that rational. As Boorstin noted, what makes these stories “interesting” is that their meaning is unclear. Why? Because hard facts are boring, and not very useful if you’re trying to fill news holes and airtime. What the public craves, and the media are happy to provide, is news that is both shocking on its face (he said what?) and endlessly debatable (what did he really mean when he said it?).
“Thus, although media types often rue the pig pile that these stories become, they are constantly on patrol for them. Where would cable news and the blogs be without them? In journalism, having a hit in the Pseudo-Sphere is like money. When the chattering class is chattering about your story, that’s as good as it gets.”
This is an interesting take, not so much on the impact that these techniques have on audiences, but on why the techniques are still pursued.
Hey, that was definitely an interesting article. I had actually been looking for a photo printing related article for a while now. Appreciate it! Do you offer a subscription service? because I can’t seem to find the information anywhere.