You may notice a small change on the cover of this issue of FOH. Where it used to say “The News Magazine for Live Sound” it now says “People. Production. Gear. Gigs.” I know it seems like a small thing, but it speaks volumes about the role of news in print media and the future of FOH magazine.
I am an old-school news guy and take great pride when we break an important story and are able to get info that our competitors either can’t get or don’t see as important enough to go after. We get those pretty regularly, but we have been having an internal discussion for more than a year about the role of straight news coverage in what we do. I am finally coming around to the POV that, while the kind of news stories we do every issue are important, the place they need to get to first and foremost is online. And if they have already been online for three weeks, there are better uses for the space in the paper and ink magazine than just repeating something that has already appeared online.
Once upon a time, when newspapers were still king, the news cycle was days — the time between issues of the newspaper. Network TV news made it a day — the time between broadcasts. Cable news networks broadcasting 24 hours a day brought the cycle down to hours and with the proliferation of news-based sites online, the news cycle is literally seconds. So, it is time to use the right media for the right content.
In the coming months, you will see some new faces in FOH (No, like ‘em or not, the old ones are not going away…) and an increased emphasis on applications and “how-to” content and stories that get deeper into the production of shows, the technology that supports them and the people and companies who make it all happen.
So Just What IS News?
That question becomes ever more important as the news cycle is driven faster and faster by changing technology. Here’s a peek behind the curtain…
News content in the live audio trade publishing biz is — much to the chagrin of many of us — largely driven by gear manufacturers. They either have inside staff or an outside publicist whose job is to produce “news stories” called press releases about the shows and companies using their products. As you might expect, these press releases are generally not "all inclusive.” That is, they focus not on an entire production but on the role played by that mfg’s gear. That in itself would be okay, but PR people being PR people, these "news stories” usually contain a fair bit of hyperbole, unsupported statements presented as facts and even some plain old garden variety bullshit.
We get anywhere from 3 to 30 of these releases every day. And we try — not always successfully — to edit out the crap and leave the good stuff. Like I said, we do not always succeed. Just a month ago, a reader sent me a letter and took me to task for a press release that got through the system virtually unedited. It happens. But our intent is always to serve as a kind of BS filter so you get the good stuff without having to break out the old hip boots.
But lately we have been told by some of the PR folks that a certain competitor — one we don’t generally mix it up with because we cover different parts of the audio world — has been getting “news” online very quickly. So, we checked it out and found that they were right. This Web site was getting the press releases that we took a day to edit and post online in a matter of minutes. So, we just had to find out how they were doing it. Child laborers in India? Some kind of new technology? Maybe it was just magic…
It turns out to be pretty simple. The Web site has a blog set up and has given the keys to posting on that blog to the PR agents in the industry. The PR people log on, post their press releases and pictures, and it goes online. The site says that all posts are held for approval by a moderator, but they go up pretty fast and there does not appear to be a lot of editing going on. In fact, the releases we saw online and the ones we got from the PR firms were verbatim the same.
Which begs a few questions. Is that news? Do you want to read unedited PR that is being called “news” or do you expect publishing people to exercise some judgment and filter out the BS so you don’t have to deal with it? Do you want pabulum passed off as news online? Or do you even care?
It comes down to us in the trade media having a decent read on the needs of the readers and being committed to filling those needs as fairly as we can. Anyone can set up a blog, and if that’s what you want let us know.
In the meantime, I have an inbox full of hyperbole-laden press releases to edit BEFORE they go online. C-ya at AES…
