Dove, the soap and beauty product people, are making news with ads and commercials featuring several curvy, full-bodied young women wearing only their bras and panties. The product being sold is a line of “firming” lotions and creams that claim to reduce cellulite
The women are also attractive and young, the oldest being 26. They range in dress sizes from 6 to 14. A slogan accompanying the ad reads: “Let’s face it, firming the thighs of a size-2 supermodel is no challenge.”
In designing the ad to appeal to the target audience – young women with generous figures – the values used were sex, conflict, proximity, novelty and progress. (For explanation of these values, go to Reading Media at the Back Booth.)
Concerning sex, girls are girls and curves are curves, whether the girl is 5-6 and 110 pounds or 5-3 and 140. As long as she is reasonably attractive and reasonably young, readers and viewers will stop and look. Many women, and a lot of men, prefer curvier women, no matter what the prominence (celebrity) magazines say the norm is. Hopefully a future Dove sequence will feature curvy women in their 40s and 50s, but that would be too risky for a first effort, and also aimed at a less-attentive audience.
Conflict shows up when the curvy, normal group, looks at the slender, celebrity group, and thinks, “Hey, we’re in the magazine, we must be special, too.”
That triggers the emotional proximity value, appealing to curvy young women who see the ad and want to be as sexy, firm of thigh and appealing as the women in the ad. This is something new, or novel, in their lives, and they feel good about this “fresh” recognition.
It is novelty, mainly, that turned the ad into a news story. This is a change in the status quo. Dove took an unusual (though ultimately quite logical) direction in marketing a celebrity-based product to a demographic group that lacked desirability in the celebrity culture. There is also conflict, which shows up in the news story in reaction to the ad. Thus the ad has done its job twice: appealing to the target audience, and attracting the attention of a larger, general audience.
Ad effectiveness is also enhanced by media reactions such as this one, and also a column by Chicago Sun-Times writer Richard Roeper, who described the Dove women as “chunky.” Talk about conflict. He got 1,000 angry emails and wrote another column.
Carl’s Jr. scored the same way with its sex- and prominence-based Paris Hilton ad (she naked except for heels and a teeny bikini, washing a car) that was exactly the kind of commercial you would expect Carl’s Jr. to choose to persuade 14-to-25-year-old males to remember the brand the next time they want a hamburger.
It was also the kind of commercial that would make news with conflict, and it did create effective controversy in the news pages and programs. The esteemed media figure Tina Brown critiqued it as a “shoddy, shameless, plainly outrageous publicity stunt that all decent, right-thinking people will condemn.”
And well they might, though few among them will be 14-to-25-year-old males.
July 31, 2005
July 30, 2005
Fruit campaign
Karen, my betrothed (getting married in September), is on a loving campaign to get more fruit into me.
“I want you to live for another 30 years (I’m 62),” she says, “and you need to eat fruits and vegetables.”
I eat vegetables regularly, but I admit I am not much on fruit. Takes room away from beef, pork and Oyster Po’ Boys.
“Pear?” she said this morning.
“Don’t like pears,” I said.
“Apple?”
“Don’t like apples,” I said.
At that moment, I was enjoying a late breakfast of peanut butter on a toasted English muffin. My tastes run to the savory and not the sweet. There is also something about the texture of apples and pears. Karen understands that and accepts it. She didn’t press the pear or the apple.
“Strawberry?” she said.
I shrugged. “Okay.” No substitute for a bowl of posole, but okay.
She turned toward the refrigerator.
“Three,” I said. She turned back toward me, walked to me, shook me by the shoulder. “You will eat a serving,” she said, laughing. We never get too serious about things, except when things need us to be serious.
“Three is a serving,” I said. Yes, I know that three strawberries is not a serving, but it is fun to protest. Most of the time, it makes Karen laugh and she has a great laugh.
She ignored me, got strawberries out of the refrigerator, I continued with the muffin and the Weather Channel. She set a custard cup, brimming with strawberries, in front of me.
“That’s too many!” I said.
“Six,” she said, declaratively, sweetly.
They weren’t bad. I remember people said that every cigarette you smoked took minutes off your life. Maybe strawberries will put them back on.
“I want you to live for another 30 years (I’m 62),” she says, “and you need to eat fruits and vegetables.”
I eat vegetables regularly, but I admit I am not much on fruit. Takes room away from beef, pork and Oyster Po’ Boys.
“Pear?” she said this morning.
“Don’t like pears,” I said.
“Apple?”
“Don’t like apples,” I said.
At that moment, I was enjoying a late breakfast of peanut butter on a toasted English muffin. My tastes run to the savory and not the sweet. There is also something about the texture of apples and pears. Karen understands that and accepts it. She didn’t press the pear or the apple.
“Strawberry?” she said.
I shrugged. “Okay.” No substitute for a bowl of posole, but okay.
She turned toward the refrigerator.
“Three,” I said. She turned back toward me, walked to me, shook me by the shoulder. “You will eat a serving,” she said, laughing. We never get too serious about things, except when things need us to be serious.
“Three is a serving,” I said. Yes, I know that three strawberries is not a serving, but it is fun to protest. Most of the time, it makes Karen laugh and she has a great laugh.
She ignored me, got strawberries out of the refrigerator, I continued with the muffin and the Weather Channel. She set a custard cup, brimming with strawberries, in front of me.
“That’s too many!” I said.
“Six,” she said, declaratively, sweetly.
They weren’t bad. I remember people said that every cigarette you smoked took minutes off your life. Maybe strawberries will put them back on.
July 27, 2005
Rove Story, Phase 2
The Karl Rove story gives the perception of following a typical pattern of marketing the news. News, as a media product, can be marketed, using the Toolbox, just as other media products such as books, movies and television programming.
In the first phase, Rove became more famous than he was before, using the conflict and prominence values. The sequence began by enabling a connection, in this case by Rove himself, between his name and the growing conflict story concerning a C.I.A. operative whose identity was revealed – a criminal offense - through a White House “leak.”
Thus Rove joined the original conflict and in so doing created a second conflict, between those in the public and private sectors anxious to accuse him, and those anxious to defend him. In past days, the one side has called for Rove’s resignation, or firing, while the other side has called him a hero. It is the second conflict that swelled the audience, making Rove more famous.
The second value, prominence, came into automatic play by the media literally focusing on Rove, in a series of print and broadcast images of Rove in his “old fame” as a top aide and strategist in the Bush administration. In his “old fame” days, viewers responded to the prominence value by looking at the president, with “some other men” in the background. Most of these knew only vaguely who Karl Rove was.
With Rove’s new conflict value, viewers looked past the president and at him in the background, with the effect of bringing him forward out of the background into new prominence. Interesting to look at a series of images, after the conflict story broke, with Rove directly behind the president’s shoulder, so that he could not help but be seen by cameras that were already looking for him.
After a week of this, the president on national prime-time television, announced his nominee for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Sandra Day O’Connor. This was a huge story, maximum for conflict and threat to the status quo, and far more sensational than the C.I.A. identity story. In the Karl Rove conflict, one side saw it as a Bush strategy to deflect attention away from the C.I.A. story, and the other side saw Bush simply taking care of the nation’s business.
The effect was to enhance Rove’s new fame (look what the president would do to protect him) and create a perspective backdrop for it (he’s a fairly small concern in the nation’s business) at the same time. Rove has new fame, but not too much. The Rove story remains in the media, but the Supreme Court story pushes it to the inside pages, or the second half of the news hour.
As an exercise in “reading news,” those are the facts as of this date. Karl Rove is more famous than he was before, but only enough to give him name and face identity to a constituency that in his “old fame” barely knew who he was. The facts position him to resign, which he will do if events are allowed to proceed to a point where the president would feel it expedient to fire him.
It is also a set of facts that presents a teaching point in a scenario, of how the Toolbox is used by professionals to market news. In the scenario, the principals have positioned themselves perfectly. President Bush called Karl Rove “the architect” of his last election victory. Rove’s skills are no longer useful to a president ineligible for re-election. But he has great value as “the architect” for election of a Bush Republican in 2008.
That is work best done outside the White House, in a party leadership role. He is now positioned to resign before he is fired (a win-win for both men), with new fame, and new credibility as a martyr to a cause, that will galvanize even the casual right in his work to come as the architect of Republican victory in 2008. It is a scenario that someone with Rove’s media skills could easily conceive, or kick himself if he didn’t.
In the first phase, Rove became more famous than he was before, using the conflict and prominence values. The sequence began by enabling a connection, in this case by Rove himself, between his name and the growing conflict story concerning a C.I.A. operative whose identity was revealed – a criminal offense - through a White House “leak.”
Thus Rove joined the original conflict and in so doing created a second conflict, between those in the public and private sectors anxious to accuse him, and those anxious to defend him. In past days, the one side has called for Rove’s resignation, or firing, while the other side has called him a hero. It is the second conflict that swelled the audience, making Rove more famous.
The second value, prominence, came into automatic play by the media literally focusing on Rove, in a series of print and broadcast images of Rove in his “old fame” as a top aide and strategist in the Bush administration. In his “old fame” days, viewers responded to the prominence value by looking at the president, with “some other men” in the background. Most of these knew only vaguely who Karl Rove was.
With Rove’s new conflict value, viewers looked past the president and at him in the background, with the effect of bringing him forward out of the background into new prominence. Interesting to look at a series of images, after the conflict story broke, with Rove directly behind the president’s shoulder, so that he could not help but be seen by cameras that were already looking for him.
After a week of this, the president on national prime-time television, announced his nominee for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Sandra Day O’Connor. This was a huge story, maximum for conflict and threat to the status quo, and far more sensational than the C.I.A. identity story. In the Karl Rove conflict, one side saw it as a Bush strategy to deflect attention away from the C.I.A. story, and the other side saw Bush simply taking care of the nation’s business.
The effect was to enhance Rove’s new fame (look what the president would do to protect him) and create a perspective backdrop for it (he’s a fairly small concern in the nation’s business) at the same time. Rove has new fame, but not too much. The Rove story remains in the media, but the Supreme Court story pushes it to the inside pages, or the second half of the news hour.
As an exercise in “reading news,” those are the facts as of this date. Karl Rove is more famous than he was before, but only enough to give him name and face identity to a constituency that in his “old fame” barely knew who he was. The facts position him to resign, which he will do if events are allowed to proceed to a point where the president would feel it expedient to fire him.
It is also a set of facts that presents a teaching point in a scenario, of how the Toolbox is used by professionals to market news. In the scenario, the principals have positioned themselves perfectly. President Bush called Karl Rove “the architect” of his last election victory. Rove’s skills are no longer useful to a president ineligible for re-election. But he has great value as “the architect” for election of a Bush Republican in 2008.
That is work best done outside the White House, in a party leadership role. He is now positioned to resign before he is fired (a win-win for both men), with new fame, and new credibility as a martyr to a cause, that will galvanize even the casual right in his work to come as the architect of Republican victory in 2008. It is a scenario that someone with Rove’s media skills could easily conceive, or kick himself if he didn’t.
July 22, 2005
Locked Out of the Future
Medical research suggests that as men and women start to get older, a man’s brain atrophies – “dies,” actually – three times faster than a woman’s.
This news comes at a bad time. I have reached a stage of maturity where a perfect stranger might glance at me on the street and think, “There is a man who is starting to get older.”
I don’t feel particularly older, and I don’t think I am old. Mature, maybe. All my parts are 1943’s, and I wouldn’t hesitate to drive them long distances across the desert at night.
But I couldn’t walk up to a perfect stranger on the street and say, “If you think I am starting to get older, you are wrong,” while looking him straight in the eye. I am more realistic than that.
I am at an age where, in the context of medical research, I can look forward to a rate of personal brain deterioration that is three times that of a woman, and I just want to say to the scientists how grateful I am for the information.
In a way I expected it. I remember feeling inferior in adolescence on learning that girls “matured emotionally” faster than boys. Why should it be any different on the other end? Women my age will still be playing bridge well into their 70s, while I have retired to a corner to drool.
The researchers apparently are aware that men are not likely to be happy about that. One researcher, a younger man apparently drawing conclusions while he still could, said the study “may predict that men are more likely to get grouchy with age than women.”
The research indicates that women apparently lose brain cells equally on both sides of the brain, while men tend to lose “about twice as much brain on the left side as the right.” The research also supplies the information – letting me know what I’m in for, I guess – that the brain’s left side (the side where my cells begin to slough off in heaps) involves language, speech, logical reasoning and analytical thought.
At the very hour that I learn my brain is turning into compost, I am dependent on at least a dozen different sets of numbers, passwords, etc., to get through an ordinary day. There are numbers and passwords that I am supposed to remember. The ATM people and the voicemail people and of course the Webmeisters are forever warning me not to write those numbers down anywhere. I can count at least a dozen. I may have other codes, but I can’t remember them right now. That is a bad sign.
The other day I was in a modern public building that required a code to get into the men’s room. In light of the research I think that is sexual discrimination but it’s not going to do me any good. Before I am dead but after I am so right-brain heavy that my head lolls on my shoulder, all makes of cars will be unlocked by number codes. Groceries will be bought by number codes. Homes will be entered by number codes.
It will be a woman’s world. I don’t mind that. But I don’t look forward to becoming such a burden.
I don’t look forward to being a blithering old grouch, yelling from the garage, “Get up from that bridge table and come out here and unlock the car for me!” at my wife.
If any woman will have me.
This news comes at a bad time. I have reached a stage of maturity where a perfect stranger might glance at me on the street and think, “There is a man who is starting to get older.”
I don’t feel particularly older, and I don’t think I am old. Mature, maybe. All my parts are 1943’s, and I wouldn’t hesitate to drive them long distances across the desert at night.
But I couldn’t walk up to a perfect stranger on the street and say, “If you think I am starting to get older, you are wrong,” while looking him straight in the eye. I am more realistic than that.
I am at an age where, in the context of medical research, I can look forward to a rate of personal brain deterioration that is three times that of a woman, and I just want to say to the scientists how grateful I am for the information.
In a way I expected it. I remember feeling inferior in adolescence on learning that girls “matured emotionally” faster than boys. Why should it be any different on the other end? Women my age will still be playing bridge well into their 70s, while I have retired to a corner to drool.
The researchers apparently are aware that men are not likely to be happy about that. One researcher, a younger man apparently drawing conclusions while he still could, said the study “may predict that men are more likely to get grouchy with age than women.”
The research indicates that women apparently lose brain cells equally on both sides of the brain, while men tend to lose “about twice as much brain on the left side as the right.” The research also supplies the information – letting me know what I’m in for, I guess – that the brain’s left side (the side where my cells begin to slough off in heaps) involves language, speech, logical reasoning and analytical thought.
At the very hour that I learn my brain is turning into compost, I am dependent on at least a dozen different sets of numbers, passwords, etc., to get through an ordinary day. There are numbers and passwords that I am supposed to remember. The ATM people and the voicemail people and of course the Webmeisters are forever warning me not to write those numbers down anywhere. I can count at least a dozen. I may have other codes, but I can’t remember them right now. That is a bad sign.
The other day I was in a modern public building that required a code to get into the men’s room. In light of the research I think that is sexual discrimination but it’s not going to do me any good. Before I am dead but after I am so right-brain heavy that my head lolls on my shoulder, all makes of cars will be unlocked by number codes. Groceries will be bought by number codes. Homes will be entered by number codes.
It will be a woman’s world. I don’t mind that. But I don’t look forward to becoming such a burden.
I don’t look forward to being a blithering old grouch, yelling from the garage, “Get up from that bridge table and come out here and unlock the car for me!” at my wife.
If any woman will have me.
July 18, 2005
Karl Rove
When you look at the Karl Rove story using the Toolbox (see Reading Media here), a couple of realities stand out.
Both Conflict and Proximity score 10s for this story, about Rove’s participation, to whatever extent, in the “outing” of an American citizen as a C.I.A. operative.
There are a couple of kinds of conflict present. First, there is the apparent conflict, as reported in the media, of so-called dirty-tricks tactics the Bush administration is willing to use to damage the reputations of its political enemies. Frank Rich wrote a long commentary about this in the Sunday New York Times.
The public is drawn to this conflict because it either wants to believe, or refuses to believe, that the Bush administration at the very highest level could play dirty tricks against Americans and then cover it up, a la Watergate.
The conflict between those two opinions is the real conflict in the story, and its value is in its effect on the Sixth News Value, Proximity. Ordinary citizens on both side of the conflict, who may have otherwise spent this time minding their own business, are galvanized toward their constituencies, either pro- or anti-Bush administration. This is a story to which they will pay attention.
That attention, of course, jacks up the Fifth Value, Prominence. Karl Rove is in the spotlight and not the background, and he is much more recognizable (all the headlines and photos with the president) and famous than he was a week ago. Citizens a week ago who were only marginally aware of Karl Rove this week are calling him a heathen (from the left) and a hero (from the right).
And so conflict has turned Rove into a minor celebrity, a name in his own right. The ordinary people now shouting Rove’s name may not understand why they are shouting like this, all of a sudden, but Karl Rove does. His mastery of the Toolbox has been an essential strength of George W. Bush’s political life.
This is not to say Rove set this C.I.A. story up. It is, however, interesting to note that last week he apparently waived his right to reporter-source confidentiality, allowing the Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper to avoid jail and practically assuring that his – Rove’s – name would enter the public debate.
Rove, knowing the Toolbox, would recognize his new “fame” immediately as a story he wishes he had set up. It reads almost like pre-publicity for someone about to leave government and publish a book, or a manifesto, and Rove isn’t just someone. President Bush calls him “the architect” of his re-election. His Toolbox-driven designs are no longer useful to a president no longer eligible for re-election, but they would be most useful in designing a purpose for Americans to elect a Bush Republican in 2008.
That work would best be done outside the White House. He could simply resign, as John Ashcroft and others have, and that would make some news, but not much. Much better that he leave with new prominence, courtesy of Matthew Cooper, that will draw attention to him, and thus his new Election 2008 project. Movie stars use the Toolbox in this way all the time, the latest being Tom Cruise.
If Rove decided on that marketing strategy, the Toolbox has positioned him to resign at any time. To even the casual left, he has new and better fame as a manipulator who “got caught.” To even the casual right, he has new and better fame, and credibility, as a martyr to a cause. The most beautiful result is that both sides are absolutely right.
Both Conflict and Proximity score 10s for this story, about Rove’s participation, to whatever extent, in the “outing” of an American citizen as a C.I.A. operative.
There are a couple of kinds of conflict present. First, there is the apparent conflict, as reported in the media, of so-called dirty-tricks tactics the Bush administration is willing to use to damage the reputations of its political enemies. Frank Rich wrote a long commentary about this in the Sunday New York Times.
The public is drawn to this conflict because it either wants to believe, or refuses to believe, that the Bush administration at the very highest level could play dirty tricks against Americans and then cover it up, a la Watergate.
The conflict between those two opinions is the real conflict in the story, and its value is in its effect on the Sixth News Value, Proximity. Ordinary citizens on both side of the conflict, who may have otherwise spent this time minding their own business, are galvanized toward their constituencies, either pro- or anti-Bush administration. This is a story to which they will pay attention.
That attention, of course, jacks up the Fifth Value, Prominence. Karl Rove is in the spotlight and not the background, and he is much more recognizable (all the headlines and photos with the president) and famous than he was a week ago. Citizens a week ago who were only marginally aware of Karl Rove this week are calling him a heathen (from the left) and a hero (from the right).
And so conflict has turned Rove into a minor celebrity, a name in his own right. The ordinary people now shouting Rove’s name may not understand why they are shouting like this, all of a sudden, but Karl Rove does. His mastery of the Toolbox has been an essential strength of George W. Bush’s political life.
This is not to say Rove set this C.I.A. story up. It is, however, interesting to note that last week he apparently waived his right to reporter-source confidentiality, allowing the Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper to avoid jail and practically assuring that his – Rove’s – name would enter the public debate.
Rove, knowing the Toolbox, would recognize his new “fame” immediately as a story he wishes he had set up. It reads almost like pre-publicity for someone about to leave government and publish a book, or a manifesto, and Rove isn’t just someone. President Bush calls him “the architect” of his re-election. His Toolbox-driven designs are no longer useful to a president no longer eligible for re-election, but they would be most useful in designing a purpose for Americans to elect a Bush Republican in 2008.
That work would best be done outside the White House. He could simply resign, as John Ashcroft and others have, and that would make some news, but not much. Much better that he leave with new prominence, courtesy of Matthew Cooper, that will draw attention to him, and thus his new Election 2008 project. Movie stars use the Toolbox in this way all the time, the latest being Tom Cruise.
If Rove decided on that marketing strategy, the Toolbox has positioned him to resign at any time. To even the casual left, he has new and better fame as a manipulator who “got caught.” To even the casual right, he has new and better fame, and credibility, as a martyr to a cause. The most beautiful result is that both sides are absolutely right.
July 11, 2005
Reading Media
If there is going to be not only a trend, but a distinct business decision to “open up” newspapers to community participation via the Internet, then I think the community participators need at least a flash course in Journalism 101.
I say this as a man who has been in the journalism profession since 1969, both as a newspaperman and a college instructor. When you do this work long enough, you realize that you may be original, and get great stories, and inform and influence the citizenry, but what you really are, at the end of the day, is a defender of principles.
These are the principles that I want known to citizens in Lawrence, Kansas, and Greensboro, N.C., two places where newspapers are introducing what they call “participatory journalism,” or “citizen journalism,” and also here in San Diego, at Voice of San Diego, whose very name mandates such participation.
It scares me to read, in The New York Times, that such newspapers mean to become “a virtual town square, where citizens have a say in the news and where every reader is a reporter,” without some assurance that those readers are least are familiar with journalism principles that are older than the Constitution and are the bedrock for the First Amendment.
The Founding Fathers knew that. Concerning the press, the First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” Since “abridge” means reduce or diminish, it means the authors understood that freedom of the press already existed in this country and was not created, but simply protected, by the First Amendment.
This nation’s principles don’t come any more basic than that, and I, for one, don’t hold with hordes of yahoos tromping all over this hallowed space without some understanding of that.
Journalists go to school to learn their trade, and the first thing they learn are the tools, rules and definitions which we use to defend journalism principles. Most people know about the famous Five W’s: Who, What, When, Where, Why.
The actual tools and realities used every day in this business are not known, however, to the general public, because they aren’t taught anywhere but journalism school. These are the tools that I insist on exposing to the coming generation of “hands-on readers,” as The Times calls them, but there is another even more compelling reason that they become generally known. These same tools are at the heart of every sitcom, every commercial, every movie, every talk show, every media product offered in a world that has become flooded with media products.
People blame the media for the flood, and for such dubious results of this flood such as reality television, the Bush Administration’s scripted town halls, and Paris Hilton, without the slightest idea of what is going on.
Media producers know exactly what is going on and use journalism’s basic tools in ways that become more sophisticated all the time. Consumers need to know those tools, too, and understand how they work, because if they do, then the media will know that the consumers know what is going on, and that will change the media-consumer relationship.
There is a blinding irony at work here. The media did, in fact, create a couple of the tools it uses. The rest were created by people. Almost all of the tools, definitions and rules of journalism were created by people thousands of years before the media came into existence. The media only took those ancient tools and turned them into a business.
There are 10 tools: Conflict, Progress, Disaster, Consequence, Prominence, Proximity, Timeliness, Human Interest, Novelty, and Sex & Sensationalism. I call them the Toolbox.
There are three media realities in the Toolbox: Balance, Professionalism and Competition. There are also three public realities: Information, Demographics and Curiosity.
And there are two laws of media: 1) The media is a business; 2) The media is an exercise in the power of small numbers.
More about this next week.
I say this as a man who has been in the journalism profession since 1969, both as a newspaperman and a college instructor. When you do this work long enough, you realize that you may be original, and get great stories, and inform and influence the citizenry, but what you really are, at the end of the day, is a defender of principles.
These are the principles that I want known to citizens in Lawrence, Kansas, and Greensboro, N.C., two places where newspapers are introducing what they call “participatory journalism,” or “citizen journalism,” and also here in San Diego, at Voice of San Diego, whose very name mandates such participation.
It scares me to read, in The New York Times, that such newspapers mean to become “a virtual town square, where citizens have a say in the news and where every reader is a reporter,” without some assurance that those readers are least are familiar with journalism principles that are older than the Constitution and are the bedrock for the First Amendment.
The Founding Fathers knew that. Concerning the press, the First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” Since “abridge” means reduce or diminish, it means the authors understood that freedom of the press already existed in this country and was not created, but simply protected, by the First Amendment.
This nation’s principles don’t come any more basic than that, and I, for one, don’t hold with hordes of yahoos tromping all over this hallowed space without some understanding of that.
Journalists go to school to learn their trade, and the first thing they learn are the tools, rules and definitions which we use to defend journalism principles. Most people know about the famous Five W’s: Who, What, When, Where, Why.
The actual tools and realities used every day in this business are not known, however, to the general public, because they aren’t taught anywhere but journalism school. These are the tools that I insist on exposing to the coming generation of “hands-on readers,” as The Times calls them, but there is another even more compelling reason that they become generally known. These same tools are at the heart of every sitcom, every commercial, every movie, every talk show, every media product offered in a world that has become flooded with media products.
People blame the media for the flood, and for such dubious results of this flood such as reality television, the Bush Administration’s scripted town halls, and Paris Hilton, without the slightest idea of what is going on.
Media producers know exactly what is going on and use journalism’s basic tools in ways that become more sophisticated all the time. Consumers need to know those tools, too, and understand how they work, because if they do, then the media will know that the consumers know what is going on, and that will change the media-consumer relationship.
There is a blinding irony at work here. The media did, in fact, create a couple of the tools it uses. The rest were created by people. Almost all of the tools, definitions and rules of journalism were created by people thousands of years before the media came into existence. The media only took those ancient tools and turned them into a business.
There are 10 tools: Conflict, Progress, Disaster, Consequence, Prominence, Proximity, Timeliness, Human Interest, Novelty, and Sex & Sensationalism. I call them the Toolbox.
There are three media realities in the Toolbox: Balance, Professionalism and Competition. There are also three public realities: Information, Demographics and Curiosity.
And there are two laws of media: 1) The media is a business; 2) The media is an exercise in the power of small numbers.
More about this next week.
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