Things That Bang

Hobnobbing with writers is always interesting and more so with journalists, not only do they know their shit but they think they know it better than others even better than their own fellow journalists. Given the kind of arrogance those working for print media suffer from it doesn't come as a surprise that they absolutely, fiercely, hate bloggers.

Sure, they hide behind excuses such as lack of style, poor grasp of language, grammar, copy pasted content ..yada... yada ...yada but the point is online self publishing has broken their monopoly over information and how it is interpreted. Not only do they find themselves competing with the very people who read them but in their scramble to be 'in' with the times many have lost direction.

Take Times Of India for example- the neo-liberal shyat that they seem to be hankering over may make the BPO youth think that with economic empowerment they can make a difference in today's world but in the blogging sphere most are cynical folks - the ones who are popular are well articulated, nasty as ever and do not spare those they think are deviating from the truth or the done protocols.

With their hard hitting commentaries on just about anything under the sun , they have provided more globalized sources of information, more out of the box, creative means of entertainment which the newspapers in their old mammoth structures are unable to adapt to.

Unable to beat the blogging phenomena papers such as TOI tried to join the blogging phenomena and failed miserably. They tried to appeal to the new generation and while some fell prey to it- those yet to be bitten by the virtual living , the wise ones laughed it off.

So what is it that newspapers don't get? According to Hugh McGuire it isn't the presenting of information that is important but the selection of it that does the trick.

For newspapers, you might say the same thing: news articles and columns are just metadata associated with the newspaper. But the real value a newspaper performs is not giving me good articles, it's putting it all together. The mere provision of information is worthless now, because anyone can do it (even me).

This is why blogs -- at least in the techno-intelligencia -- win. Blogs are excellent selectors of information, while newspapers are pretty clunky at it -- because for the past 300 years they existed in an ecosystem where information was scarce. Now information (and access to it) is abundant. So a site like BoingBoing becomes one of the most popular on the net: their craft is not providing information, it's selecting it. And they're good at it.

And given the huge overabundance of information on the web, we need all the help we can get in selecting. So newspapers need to work harder at providing that service, bringing that core skill (which they have always had -- the Editor is the God of the newspaper) to bear on the web. Take down their stupid registration systems, put up a decent web site, and get on with things and stop whining.

But something tells me even when the stop whining they won't be able to keep up with the online world. Incidentally the new Mint newspaper is awesome and far better than TOI and even Deccan Herald.