A recent interviewee for A Fresh, Ferocious Wave was talking about the need for immediacy and the value of user-generated content. He said that it might not be as polished as in the old days of print media but it would be “good enough” and that “good enough is what we should aim for.”
Good enough for what? For a C?
This week President Obama announced that all combat troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by August 31. He says he’s making good on a campaign promise. That news blurb is C work, good enough and maybe all I really need to know.
But that’s not journalism; that’s a press release.
If I hadn’t watched the national news and read a daily paper, I wouldn’t know the rest of the story: about how the US embassy compound in Iraq is the largest in the world and we’re adding 5 more around the country, about how all those diplomatic personnel need protection, about how withdrawing combat troops doesn’t necessarily mean all the people in uniform get to come home.
That’s journalism. Good journalism never aims for a C.
Good enough for the average 5 minutes a day young users spend reading?
If so, “good enough” dooms us to shallower and shallower information. Journalism expects a commitment on the part of the reader. But not only is the digital space a scannable medium, it is largely a free medium. Readers don’t have much commitment to something they didn’t pay for.
I have always subscribed to The Economist. It is the only magazine I subscribe to—unusual for a magazine editor. It takes me several days to read The Economist and it is worth the $350 a year I pay for it. But I buy lots of magazines, stacks at a time. I can “read” an issue of InStyle or Lucky in an hour, between the two announcements about fastening my seat belt. The editorial looks pretty much like the advertising and one is really only a glorified version of the other. Similarly, Chicago’s Tribune Company publishes a free paper called the Red Eye. My husband and I call it “the fluff,” as in, “did the fluff come this morning.” It is a carrier for free standing insert (FSI) advertising and takes about 5 minutes to read.
The Economist is a mile wide and a mile deep. It demands and receives my commitment and my money. The “fluff” is as wide as Chicago and less than a millimeter deep. It demands nothing and gets nothing in return—but then neither do I. It’s good enough to carry FSIs but not for much else.
Good enough for homemade?
On Project Runway, the model Heidi Klum, one of the judges, will sometimes sniff in her Teutonic way that a contestant’s efforts that week look “a little home sewn.” Reality TV and user-generated content have that same homemade vibe. A little lumpy, a little unpolished; seams that don’t match, edges left unsanded; non sequiturs, malapropisms; plain bad ideas, things better left unsaid.
We accept that not all rich media will have the production values of a professional TV crew. (Witness our podcast with Brian Boyer recorded on Michigan Avenue complete with sirens and the conversations of passersby.) But we would still like to find them credible.
John Zogby says in The Way We’ll Be that we are looking for authenticity rather than production values. User-generated content often keeps its homemade look and feel because it’s “real,” but that does not make it trustworthy. Something can be authentic without being true.
Chapter 3 of A Fresh, Ferocious Wave (to begin uploads in October) will explore the uses and limitations of the first person. When journalism students wrote in the first person, professors would mark their papers with “RA”, rat’s ass, as in “who gives a rat’s ass what you think.”
What you think is good enough for you but it may not be good enough for me. I’d like to know what someone who has some context thinks, someone who’s been following this topic for a long time. In other words, if a professional model says it looks home sewn, I believe her. If she comes out wearing something with the seams on the outside and the lining hanging out in the back, I figure it must be fashion rather than a home ec project gone bad.
Journalism is a craft that professionals spend years trying to perfect. Those who would be journalists, whether they receive a salary or blog for love, have to put in the hours it takes to craft credible copy. I truly believe that readers will be able to tell the difference between homemade and well done.
