Back about a zillion years ago (okay 30), Jan Ramsey founded the New Orleans music and culture magazine offBEAT. Over the years, the magazine has become the “paper of record” of New Orleans music.
As editor-in-chief, she’s exercised her prerogative to pen a monthly editorial under the perfect byline “Mojo Mouth,” usually directly related to the local music scene. (Cosimo Matassa, rest his lovely soul, would reflexively correct anyone who referred to the local “music business” that we didn’t have one, but that we have a great music scene.)
Since the federal flood of 2005, her editorials have broadened their scope. One can’t credibly comment on the complex culture of our city without acknowledging the profound and rapid demographic and economic changes that have affected our erstwhile backwater.
As an editor and publisher who’s ridden the rough waters of the ink-to-pixels revolution over the last twenty years, she has increasingly mused on the nature of journalism and its prospects for the future.
In this month’s issue, her column touches on a point which, in my opinion, is too often lost in our outrage over the failures of the “MSM” or “corporate media.” We, the consumers of media, often rail against the failure of newspapers, networks and websites, moaning that they cover the most inane sensationalism where they once might have offered a serious look at the issues that affect those media’s consumers.
“It’s all about the clicks!” “They only want to please the advertisers!” we cry.
But whose fault is that? The editorial boards? The ad sellers? No, it’s ours.
Take it, Jan.
“Journalism” in newspapers is now focused on how many clicks a writer generates for his or her online story. So the TMZ story on the Brangelina divorce is going to get a lot more clicks than a corruption story in Congress. Clicks equate to advertising, don’t you know, and that’s pretty much what it’s all about. Click bait. Clicks equal money.
Journalism used to provide information that people need to know about, not particularly what they want to know about (would you rather read a juicy gossip story or a sports feature rather than what’s going in your city government?).
I highly recommend you read Jan’s editorial and, after doing so, consider the implications of journalism driven by instant feedback. The old adage that “Americans get exactly the government that they deserve, because they voted for it” is as true as ever. But if you substitute “media” for “government,” it’s even more true.
Like it or not, we are now the editors. Will the media cover Hillary Clinton stumbling from the curb into her SUV or David Fahernhot’s latest investigation into Himself’s “charitable” foundation? That, for better or worse, is entirely up to us now.
The “Click-tavism” diaries here are a good indication of how we can move the media to cover the stories we believe important. But just being passive consumers can’t move the numbers that much. We must also engage the editors and publishers with comments, letters to the editor, guest submissions.
And more. What that “more” might be, I don’t know. I’m hoping you might have some ideas.
