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Talk About a Mash-Up
As the ink dries up in the newspaper industry, a humorous video clip shows the conflicting sensibilities of old and new media.
The past and present get a good poke in the ribs in the hilarious sendup from LandlineTV.com (“Culturally relevant … for about a week” reads the site’s tagline). The scene starts in the office of an über-hip blog, bohemania.com. The editor says that because of the demise of newspapers, he’s been getting a ton of resumes from print journalists and he’s decided to hire a few — and that’s when the wackiness ensues.
Cut to a news meeting where the very calm (and clearly not deadline-pressed) editor says he’s going to do a story on the latest wireless ear buds, then the camera pans to a highly-strung, circa-His Girl Friday old-timey news reporter, complete with cigar and press pass stuck jauntily in his hatband pitching a story about corruption in city hall — to the blank stares of the blog staff.
In another scene, we see a newsboy on the street corner hawking URLs about a Britney Spears crotch shot, while back in the office, a pressman keeps trying to dip the Web designer’s keyboard into a bucket of ink.
The spot, while side-achingly funny — if you’re an old-school journalist — digs up a deeper point: Who wants to read about city hall corruption? BORING! The editor points out that that story doesn’t quite fit in with the coveted 18-34 demographic. They’d rather read about “the best mash-ups of March.” Uh, OK.
As newspapers enter the end stages of their death rigors, journalists (both old and young), academics, businesspeople and even politicians find themselves wondering about not only how to make news relevant to that demographic, but how to sell it and how to deliver it (Google? Twitter? Kindle? Anything is better than paper, it seems.).
A recent Forbes.com story has The Pew Research Center reporting that 5,000 newspaper jobs were lost in 2008, and since 2001, more than 10,000 newspaper journalists have lost their jobs. The Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer have folded (though the P-I is still online with a staff of around 20 people). Despite all this, Forbes also reports that journalism school enrollment is actually going up.
“What are all these people going to do for a living?” the story asks. “Some may actually get jobs in journalism. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2016 the number of positions for entry-level reporters and news anchors will increase 2%, while those for experienced writers and editors will grow 10%. Expect trade publications, freelance work and digital media to supply the bulk of the jobs.”
We hear bohemania.com might be hiring …
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