Something Dan over at Puritan City went off on got me thinking about the status of various contemporary media forms.
Not so much what his blurbicle is about, although that’s interesting too. No… what I’m interested in is the statement about the grown-ups of media.
You see, since I started publishing way back in the halcyon days before Smell-O-Vision was quietely swept back under whatever rug it crawled out from under (circa-1999) there seems to be an assumption floating that somehow, for some reason, on-the-fly writing just isn’t as good as what comes out of the Major Media Outlets ™.
Now in some cases that’s true. The big players produce a fine piece of ex-tree with lots of well conceived words on it. They do an excellent job of tracking stories in those venerable pulpy publications and lavish an array of resources on them.
But where it’s not all that true is in the sphere of instant publishing. Online they tend to have such a need for media that they crap out AP articles with a little more flesh on them and try to pass them off as shiney and new.
Whereas I and my brethren function with no such set of constraints. Small outlets that have come up from the groundswell more or less organically don’t have the same insane need to produce filler in such vast quantities. To wit: if there isn’t anything new for me to write on, I don’t.
Sure, there are lots of smaller outlets that do the same regurgitation of article matter. But as long as the means of production stays free and redistribution stays at zero, there’s nothing to drive them to grow into the USA Today or Wall Street Journal of the online world. You’re not constrained to reading only from those with the money to produce.
What’s it all mean? No clue.
How to Insult Your Fans » Puritan City
