
48March 2015
48March 2015
MEDIA MOBILE JOURNALISM
I
N a widely shared blog at the end of
February, Fredrik de Boer, a doc-
toral student at Purdue University
mused on the sameness of many new
media outlets, from the “edgy” Vice
to the statistics-based news promise
of Five Thirty Eight. Each outlet, from
Gawker to Buzzfeed to Business Insider
to the Atlantic, may tweak the product
mix, but although they have different
approaches, they are all chasing the
same news stories.
“The mix changes; Grantland is
some more sports and a little less
news and whatever intern is cur-
rently writing the ‘Bill Simmons’
column. Slate is a little less sports
and a little more politics and Troy
Patterson endlessly writing the word
“gentleman” into his Mead notebook
in cursive while admiring his new
glasses in the mirror. New York is a
little of everything with some sooth-
ing noises to remind New Yorkers that
they are very very important. The
revamped New York Times Magazine
is a lot of the same edited by people
who think you can get more sexy Mille-
nials to your website by adjusting the
kerning on your font. The Atlantic is a
lot of the same plus Ta-Nehisi Coates
plus Coates’s creepshow commenters
asking him to forgive their sins. Busi-
ness Insider is a lot of the same only
written for the illiterate. The New
New Republic is the same stuff writ-
ten by every non-white male Gabriel
Snyder could find to exorcise the
vengeful presence of Marty Peretz’s
farting ghost, and thank god for that,
plus Jeet Heer with an essay made up
of 800 numbered tweets. Buzzfeed is
a lot of the same only as if life was a
Law & Order episode about the Inter-
net from 1998. Salon is the same stuff
but every single piece is headlined
‘Ten Things You Won’t Believe Repub-
licans Said on Fox News’ regardless
of content. Vox is a lot of the same
stuff plus a new-fangled invention
called the “card stack”, an innovative
approach which allows webpages to
“link” to other pages. The Awl is a lot
of the same stuff brought to you by the
emotion sadness. Gawker is a lot of
the same stuff, cleverly hidden across
1,200 sub-blogs along with several
thousand words of instructions for
how to read the site that are some-
how still an inadequate guide. Vice
is a lot of the same stuff written by
that guy you knew in high school who
told you he did cocaine but seemed to
only ever have that fake marijuana
called Wizard Smoke you could buy
at a gas station. Five Thirty Eight,
I’m told, exists, although whenever
I try to open it my browser seems to
show me a strange lacuna into which
the idea of a website was, once, meant
to congeal. But one way or another,
you could take 90% of what each of
these sites publish and stick it on any
other, and nobody would ever know
the difference”.
The same gimmick can easily be
applied to any market, whether in print
or online media, including Ireland. The
Irish Times is a bit more solemn and a
bit more Dublin southside. The Inde-
pendent is a bit more country and a bit
less rugby and arguably somewhat more
Denis O’Brien.
The Herald is a bit more soccer and
greyhounds. The Examiner is a bit more
Munster. Or even a lot more Munster.
The Mail is a bit more distaff. The Star is
a lot more sports. The Journal is younger,
snappier, and makes a virtue of brevity.
Legacy media often differentiated
itself from its competitors not by what
it reported, but by its geographic reach.
When the local newsagent only stocks
one or two titles, it doesn’t really matter
that all the titles are reporting essen-
tially the same news. But geography
becomes irrelevant online. A Donegal
reader who bought The Independent
or Times because the Examiner didn’t
arrive until close to midday is no longer
constrained, because each title is only a
click away, along with new rivals from
RTE.ie to theJournal.ie, or even Joe.ie
and Broadsheet.
Newsrooms can no longer rely on scar-
city as part of their business model. The
internet creates abundance, a wealth
of news literally at the audience’s fin-
gertips. The audience’s problem isn’t
where to get news, it’s deciding which
of the many competing news and enter-
tainment channels to spend (allegedly)
scarce time on.
Newspapers are in trouble because
of their sameness. As they move online,
whether behind paywalls or advertising-
supported, they lose their geographic
distinctiveness. The physical product
may continue to sell most strongly in a
particular market but, online, the target
audience is not defined by location. It
may be of interest to advertisers, so it
matters when it comes to which advert
is served by the algorithm, but their
reading habits are defined by age pro-
files (Generation X, Y,
Millennial, or Boomers?), adapted-
ness to technology and political views,
Mobile audio-visual
journalism is the
coming thing in new
media. By Gerard
Cunningham
MOJO, Bro
Each outlet,
from
Gawker
to
Business
Inside
r to the
Atlantic
, may
tweak the
product mix,
but they are
all chasing the
same news
stories
“