I watched CNN’s[1] live coverage of the Olympic Torch relay in San Francisco yesterday. It turned out to be an enormous victory for the anti-Chinese protesters even though they never even caught sight of the actual flame – a brilliant, absurd turn of events facilitated entirely by the wonders of US live action news.

After the London and Paris protests[2] the US news media geared up for a live extravaganza not seen since the OJ White Bronco chase. With protests on both sides (pro- and anti-Chinese) by thousands starting the day before the actual relay those newsrooms must have been cooking through the night. In the end the world’s hungry eyes weren’t disappointed.

pro-Chinese Activism

The protesters showed up(again on both sides), the Chinese musical revue showed up for the relay end ceremony, the news helicopters showed up in force[3] – but no flame. Actually, what they did do was to light the torch and then to jog it into a warehouse where it stayed for some 10 minutes or longer. The warehouse (under the watchful eye of the news helicopters) then spat out a convoy of buses and a decoy of a boat and jetski’s in the harbour to confuse the protesters as to where the torch was. Meanwhile the protesters waited patiently and peacefully along the originally planned route. An hour later the torch magically appeared on an empty street more than two miles from the original route. The relay’s closing ceremony was also canceled and the poor Chinese musicians had to pack up their stuff with their hopes of 15 minutes of network news coverage dashed. And it was all captured in glorious colour by CNN.

anti-Chinese Activism

Here’s some of what people said on the subject:

We assessed the situation and felt that we could not secure the torch and protect the protesters and supporters to the degree that we wished. As a consequence we engaged in subsequent contingency planning that we felt would keep people safe.
SF Mayor

I think we were cheated, because I think the meaning of the relay was to show the whole world that our country is hosting the Olympics
the pro-Chinese

I think it’s cowardly. If they can’t run the torch through the city, it means that no one is supporting the games.
the anti-Chinese

So then, no arrests and everyone went home. Well done to the protesters(on both sides) – you showed up and stood your ground. But why was this such a victory for the anti-Chinese protesters? They got very little face time while this was going on. It’s brilliantly simple really; because Americans (and by extension the US media) looove breaking news – unforeseen developments. Had the relay gone on as planned and there had been some scuffles and arrests the TV-watching public would have nodded in agreement with whichever preconceived notion they had; either ‘Damn right! China out of Tibet!’ or ‘Damn right! Politics out of sport!’. But it didn’t happen that way. Instead the uniform message that the news monster broadcast was that China and their San Franciscan hand-holders were so shit scared of running the peaceful gauntlet that they jumped in a van and hid the flame beneath their tracksuit shirts. An outrageous victory for the anti-Chinese protesters.

Phew! At least the flame survived

In closing I’d like to comment on the sentiment of some politics-out-of-sport groups about whether these types of protests should be linked to the Olympic Games. The argument that they are pushing is that, given the world’s economic intertwinedness with China[4], people should be protesting at the doorstep of the global corporations doing business in China before they dump on the poor athletes who only want to achieve their potential.
There is some merit in this thinking, but the fact is that this is not just an Olympic Games. It is, what has been elegantly called, Beijing’s coming out party. This is a very powerful moment for Beijing and the Chinese. This is their debutant show on the world stage; their first run as a global city; a centre of culture and glorious achievement. How can anyone be part of this level of hypocrisy without saying something?
By all means, do not boycott the actual games. All the athletes should attend and achieve their best. But why should they do so silently? Why not wear a Kasaya armband? Again I am preaching without actually doing anything[5] – but the athletes have a wonderful opportunity to show up, rock the house with their excellence and still tell China that they do not fall for the glorious delusion of the Bird’s Nest stadium.

I’m always surprised when people bemoan the perceived demise of print media. Print media isn’t going anywhere; it is changing radically[1] but the demand for printed media will remain strong for years to come. And the reason is simple: it’s about the glossy. South Africa has seen an explosion of niche glossy magazines. These are aimed at the very top end of the South African spending pyramid and are all essentially lifestyle magazines. Ostensibly they are about self actualisation or home improvement or leisure pursuits, but in truth they are all about the lifestyle; they’re aspirational – nothing more.
Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against aspirational products[2] as long as they don’t claim to be anything else. And here’s a hot new straight-chipper of an entrant to that market: Golf Punk.

Hey punk!

The magazine (published in South Africa under a UK license) launched in late 2007 and seems set to turn a tidy profit from casual golf punks. Here’s their pitch to advertisers:

[Golf Punk is] a magazine with the express intention of making players look like Hollywood stars, introducing equipment in a whole new light, and shooting the best fairway fashion ever seen.

Damn. I can dig on that. If I were a golf advertiser looking to sell some rad shirts I would be crapping my pants right about now. Hollywood! fashion! punks! Who could ask for more?

Seriously though, I think that this is a brilliant ads pitch and I would be willing to bet that the management team spent as much time crafting that sentence as they did planning their launch issue. Golf Punk is totally up front about their goal – inject as much sex as possible into golf and sell nothing but the wildest products off the back of that.

Punks

So go ahead, check out the Golf Punk site. Browse their Bunker Babes or check out golf clubs styled like sex toys under Golf Junk. It’s brilliant from the opening tee to the clubhouse. And next time you find yourself in that snaking, air conditioned food market queue, pick one up and travel along to their fantasy golf destinations: you know you want to.

[1] for example I certainly don’t think that the broadsheet will survive in its current form.
[2] I own a pair of Nike shoes that belong to their Sports Culture range. Can you fucking believe that? It’s not even Sports Leisure or Recreation anymore, just Sports Culture. Plop those babies onto a footstool while you watch Snooker on ESPN and you’ve made it, you’ve filled the mandate that those shoes put to you.

I’ve recently been reading Scholars an Rogues for its intelligent analysis[1]. An article on the future of newspapers comments on a move within the traditional[2] US newspaper market to reduce circulation and to focus on reaching only profitable customers. The article quotes a New York Times story[3]

It’s a rational business decision of newspapers focusing on quality circulation rather than quantity, shedding the subscribers who cost more and generate less revenue.

And so, in short the trend is that

Newspapers don’t want many of us to subscribe — because we cost too much to service. [...] the fact that I live in a rural area means that newspapers I want to read won’t deliver to my door. This phenomenon [...] has been growing.

as it was	as it is	and as it will be

Here are some stats about the 2006 US newspaper market from the same article

66 percent of readers are between ages 18 and 54.
51 percent have household incomes over $50,000 (16 percent over $100,000).
53 percent have some college experience or an undergraduate or graduate degree.
63 percent are married.
89 percent are white.

What is happening is that newspapers are limiting the geographical range within which they are willing to distribute(in order to make the cost model work), preferring to concentrate on urban centers. The qualitative comment of the article on this trend is to:

Begin writing the long-term obituary of the American newspaper [as] envisioned by the Founders as a public service and a significant component of the checks and balances that once allowed American democracy to function properly and purposefully.
[...]
[If the trend is for a] transition from [providing a] public-service(and making money) to protecting the profit margin [by selling] to core advertisers a Caucasian, home-owning, upper-middle class, well-paid, college-educated, urban audience, then what can be expected of the journalism those papers produce?

And so the basic threat posed by this trend is that the focus on profitable circulation will threaten the public service that newspapers have provided as a source of information, investigation and social comment. This is undeniably true, but I do think that it is somewhat alarmist. And so, my comments on this trend and on the author’s analysis.

Firstly, we have to accept that flagship newspapers[4] are no longer news carriers in the traditional sense. The fact is that they have become high-end media products that more closely resemble magazines[5] than what they do the traditional daily. The mega-brand papers are being consumed in the same way that readers consume Vanity Fair/New Yorker/Harpers/Wallpaper/Der Spiegel. This is not a trend driven by the newspaper publishers, it is driven by those white-collar, urban, caucasian consumers to whom the newspaper publishers are responding. And in that light the newspapers will produce journalism that their readers want, whatever that might be. Commercial journalism is no longer about bringing instruction or understanding to the eager masses who sit at the feet of the master journalists to learn of the evils that their government are perpetrating. It’s about satisfying their consumers’ appetite for media[6].

Secondly, who gives a fuck about how the US Founding Fathers envisioned newspapers? The Founding Fathers of the modern Afrikaner nation in South Africa also envisioned newspapers as a public service – just a particularly skewed one. The founding fathers of any nation are no longer relevant. Democracy has changed – it’s protection can no longer be left to a caring elite of journalists. Our information demands have changed, we want access to information from a variety of sources in a variety of formats. And newspapers make up only a portion(if any) of this demand. The sanctity of the Word as spoken by The Whatever Times is irrelevant to the modern society who 10 or 20 years ago did accept that word as a daily sacrament.

Which brings me to newspapers in South Africa. There has been a similar acceleration in the decline in circulation of the traditional South African newspapers. But this has been rendered trivial by an explosive growth in the lower end daily newspaper market that does not cater to the white/caucasian market, but to the increasingly mobile, mostly black, working class. The earth shattering arrival of the Daily Sun has caused a revolution in the South African newspaper industry – its rapid rise to market dominance[7] has surprised even the most Africa-aggressive media analysts. It has become, within the last four years, the only newspaper that matters and it is now the first nationwide daily newspaper in South Africa’s history.

The Daily Sun is undeniably a tabloid, containing a hefty dose of stories on crime, revenge, witchcraft and wild parties; but there is more to it than its first two pages and I would argue that it is more relevant to the public interest than what euro-ripoff old-skool papers like Beeld, Die Burger and the Independents are.
Beyond its headline grabbers it has realised the value of addressing their readers’ upward mobility in the form of articles on everything from how to get out of micro-loan debt to applying for a mortgage for a first house.
By focusing on news that is relevant to their readers, in a language that their readers are comfortable with[8] the paper is serving its readers better than what any Pulitzer prize toting 5000-word-per-capita-per-a-day newsroom could.

To be fair, the explosion driven by the Daily Sun has resulted in a series of low-end tabloids such as the Son or *shudder* the Daily Voice that offer up some hilarious headlines and page 3 girls with their all-natural boobs out, but little in the way of investigation or comment. But this is no different than what Murdoch did to the UK with The Sun.

The Daily Sun	Kaapse Son	The Cape Sun

Another trend which is only now developing in the South African market is the rise of the free mega-daily in the form of the bet-the-company project of the Sunday Times[9] which is to deliver a free daily newspaper to their(country-wide) subscribers – The Times. At first I was extremely skeptical of The Times since I could not see how they could make the distribution model work for daily, selective, door-to-door deliveries of a newspaper whose only income is through advertising[10]. And in that sense The Times is in a similar situation as that described by the author, the cost of distribution weighing down the reach of a newspaper and thereby prompting it to reduce its circulation. But I was wrong – purely because I didn’t understand the genius distribution model of The Times; they distribute that motherfucker on foot!
This would, of course, never work in the US or Europe, but in South Africa there is no cheaper form of last-mile transport than by human carrier. The only snag in this distribution could be in getting the selective distribution right (i.e. delivering the newspaper to the right houses in a neighbourhood). The Times is already showing the potential to turn the South African middle-class newspaper market on its head by swallowing whole the markets both for traditional regional dailies and for free community(middle-class suburban) newspapers.

So where does this leave investigative journalism as a public service? Firstly, high-end newspapers are certainly not interested in the public anymore. Secondly democracy today cannot function as envisioned by the US Founders – a college of benign care-providers to the nation with a balancing college of intellectuals and journalists – that world does not exist anymore and nor does that role for the mega-daily newspapers. But the void left by the magazination of the traditional flagship newspaper will be filled by something – not because democracy requires it, but because there will be a commercial demand for it. And that something, whether it be free dailies or low cost tabloid-format, non-trash newspapers will report on the stories that their readers want, not what is good for their readers.
And is this bad? Is the loss of a daily, paternalistic schooling of the masses by revered journalists bad? I don’t think so.

The future is about the individual – the death of the public interest and the supremacy of individual interest. The future balancing of democracy, a lumbering social system in terrible health in its old age, is not in the public forum of teacher-journalists but in the individual’s freedom to access whatever information they want, be it truths about their nation’s foreign policy or the latest on Lindsay Lohan’s nasal cavity.

[1] on politics, media, corporates, social issues – a thinking blog
[2] read dominant
[3] Funny, one of America’s largest newspapers[i] writing about its own drop in ‘standards’
[i] dwarfed by USA Today whose daily circulation tops 2 million copies[ii]
[ii] though, should we even consider USA PropagandaToday a newspaper?
[4] The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, London times, Guardian and BILDs of the world
[5] In terms of its focus, content and even editorial policies
[6] Which does still include an appetite for investigation and analysis, but also for culture, travel, fashion, gossip and sex
[7] 500,000 copies sold per day, which translates to some 4 million readers per day. In a country of 46 million people that is phenomenal
[8] Not slang, but simplified English
[9] South Africa’s ‘most respectable’ gossip/trash/investigation newspaper[i]
[i] another hilarious story is the development of South Africa’s traditional newspapers. The Sunday Times has become all about the trash and the once-mighty Rapport is now relegated to being the rugby newspaper – pure comedy.
[10] If you ignore the revenue from new subscribers which supplements the cost of producing The Times

Following on from last week’s Maddox Jolie-Pitt extravaganza, here’s some more quality journalism – this time courtesy of Breitbart on the occasion of David Beckham’s scoring a goal.

It also ties in nicely with the continuing triumph of David Beckham in Hollywood. This time around[1] the story clocks in at a beefy 467 words, but, oh, what words they are!
I’ll cut to the chase.

Beckham scored a goal in his first starting game[2] of the L.A. Galaxy in his trademark fashion – from a freekick. The team management must have crapped their collective pants with joy at this – not because of the goal and/or winning the game, but because of the amount of press that this would generate.

Whoohoo! He’s so cool! We’re all on TV!

Back to my story – here are some outtakes from the quality journalism of Breitbart

Fans cheered and women screamed as Beckham prepared to take a 26-yard free kick. After he connected inside the left post, he was mobbed by teammates. Goalkeeper Joe Cannon even scampered across more than half the field to join the celebration.
[...]
Beckham waved to the crowd a couple times while blue, gold and white confetti fluttered through the air, reminiscent of the scene when he was introduced amid much fanfare July 13.
[...]
As the halftime whistle blew, Beckham bent over and adjusted his socks, then stood up, a broad smile on his face as he waved and walked off the field.

That’s it: he adjusted his socks – hot-damn-fuck!

More power to David Beckham, he genuinely is a star. As for the management of the L.A. Galaxy; it looks like their gamble might pay off. Beckham has been speaking more slowly recently, and at a lower pitch[3] – apparently so that Americans can understand him more easily. He is very, very well managed.

And the press? Readers get what they want and deserve. If mindless journalism didn’t exist we would have invented it[4].

[1] unlike the Jolie-Pitt micro-saga
[2] also his first as captain
[3] his natural voice is quite squeaky – very un-macho, very un-American
[4] as is the case with all ‘good things‘

Here’s a little absurdity for your bite-size consumption.

I’ve given up on bemoaning the absurdity of celebrity media and am now just laughing at it and today delivered a rockin’ example.
The Huffington Post bills itself as ‘Top News and Opinion‘. Fine, I can dig on that. But here’s what they post as Breaking Entertainment News: Maddox’s Birthday: Camo, ATV’s And A Slip ‘N Slide.

Breaking Entertainment News – click to read

I’m not phased anymore that they describe this junk as ‘Breaking’ or even as ‘News’. Nor am I ruffled by the fact that this is one of the stories that they list on their RSS full feed[1].

What blows my mind today is that the entire story in all its investigative journalistic glory clocks in at a whopping 54 words. That’s it! 54 fucking words.

FYI, reporting on this absurdity in this post has consumed all of 152 words[2]. Should I be concerned that I’m being longwinded?

[1] The only story that beats it, at the time of writing this, is: Blackstone Raises $21.7 Billion For Record Private Equity Fund.
[2] Not including footnotes or title