The Oldness of New Media
November 29, 2007
I've never really cared for the term "new media." It has some usefulness for describing writing, video, and other publishing taking place online, but here's my big gripe with the term -- no one uses the term but people in "old" media. You never here people from YouTube describe their site as a "new media site for sharing user-generated video." For me, "new media" seems to be a way to make publishing online seem more important than it really is. I hate to break it to fans of "new media," but there's nothing special about putting your writing or videos or what have you online. Everyone's doing it these days.
So with that out of the way, here are a few things that point out your oldness, you new media publishers you:
putting the .com in .com
Only old media publishers brand their sites with the .com actually in the logo. Look at Slashdot or Digg. In fact, just notice that we refer to those sites as "Slashdot" or "Digg," not "Slashdot.org" or "Digg.com." Now, look at NBC.com or CNN.com. I understand that you're trying to distinguish your online presence from your traditional venue of the TV, but no one else thinks of you like this.
Maybe in a few years when the TV is just another computer screen, these sites will finally drop the .com from the branding. Let's hope they're not irrelevant by then.
User-generated content
I've been working on a project for work that has been called our "user-generated content" project. I think the term is habit more than that anyone I work with really thinks of it like this, but the phrase -- which is batted around way too much -- is a clear sign that you're old media trying to be new media. Here's the problem I have with the phrase:
There is nothing on the Web that doesn't originate with the user.
Facebook and MySpace and other social sites are the most obviously purely user-based sites, but even Google wouldn't exist without a user's search terms. The very act of linking to your site is a user act, not a publisher one. If your thinking of content as an us and them proposition, your days are numbered. Sorry to break it to you. :-)
The Author Complex
This is a hard one to explain succinctly, but we'll call it the "author complex." I'll reach back to my "Introduction to Creative Writing" class to explain.
In fiction, the author is God. The author decides what happens and to whom it happens and why it happens. The author controls the experience. The author guides the reader through a narrative, controlling pace, setting, point of view, and access or lack thereof to a character's thoughts. In fiction, the author has complete control over the reader's experience of the text.
It's all too common these days that old media publishers want to carry this control forward to the Internet. DRM is the most obvious and heinous way in which publishers try to control the use of their content. The political and ethical debates run deep on this one, so I won't even get into DRM itself. Both iTunes and NBC Direct have DRM, but once I buy something on iTunes I can basically do what I want with it. With NBC Direct, I need a proprietary, Windows-only player and the download only works for 48 hours. Yes, I can redownload after 48 hours, so long as it's within 7 days of when the show last aired.
gah!
That's complicated to understand, much less use, and stands as a clear example of where NBC has an author complex and wants to control my viewing experience. My cable company's video on demand service is more flexible.
But DRM is not the only example of this. JavaScript ads that take control of the web browser, opening new windows to external sites, and even navigation elements themselves can be used to try to control the user's experience of the content.
If you look at features of a web site as a way to direct or control a user's experience rather than as a way to enable your users to do what they want to do, you're old media trying to be new.
