Out With A Bang

In amidst the general pantomime of my life, consciously or not this blog has ended up taking something of a back-seat over the last two weeks.

In part, there’s a lot going on. Tis the start of a new football season for www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and www.addiply.com continues to take us all on some interesting, if time-consuming paths.

But in other ways, I’m increasingly beginning to think that there’s not a lot going on.

Anywhere.

Other than some deep and discomforting navel-gazing amongst some pillars of the global journalistic community… http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/wire/5408 … all of which might explain why Mr Rusbridger was quite so keen to emphasize the point that, in his humble opinion, our Lords and Masters in Whitehall had not even begun, ‘not even begun…’ to address the profound issues that plague media both big and small in this country.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=313

Otherwise you look around this world of ours and it tends to be a despiriting mix of accusation and envy, of despair and desperation; laced with the occasional drop of smugness from those that think they have the answer.

Which, in fairness, the FT probably has.

It’s called a niche.

And an expenses account.

Which is why someone with an expenses account might consider paying an annual £2,500 subscription for pay-walled news from China. A ‘niche within a niche…’ indeed.

Particularly if you worked for say, the Royal Bank of Scotland and the UK tax-payer was, therefore, picking up the tab for what’s hot to trot in downtown Beijing.

To think that thataway lies salvation for the Daily Mirror, The Observer or, indeed, The Guardian is – I think – wrong.

There isn’t any great pay wall lesson for us all – other than if you’re working a well-heeled, business niche you’ve got a chance.

So, what? Guardian puts its Education supplement behind a pay-wall; that going to get FT type take-up off a teachers’ Xs?

Which is why the scepticism that underpins Gordon’s piece on BrandRepublic is well-placed…

http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/gordons_republic/archive/2009/08/04/ft-editor-on-failure-and-charging-for-the-future-of-content.aspx

… that if the web has taught us anything over the last decade it is that one answer won’t fit all; that there is no one answer; that nothing works, but everything might…

The real poison, of course, is reserved for the BBC whose efforts at extending a hand of friendship out to its big media ‘pals’ in the shape of the video feed deals with The Guardian et al was met with outright disdain in certain quarters… that it left others to market and distribute ‘brand’ BBC; that hard-pressed big media houses were doing no more than driving traffic back into the mouth of a publically-funded monster.

Right now, Sly and Co have a point.

Cos for me – and I’ve been down this road in part with the content network that www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity begins to offer – the BBC have yet to wholly grasp the fact that for any ‘link economy’ to work, it has to be a two-way street.

Or if they do ‘get’ the deal, there is little evidence of anyone putting it into practical or pilot effect.

That what they need to shy away from is the ‘written’ side of their business; leave the words to the people that can and stick to what they do best – video, what-was-once ‘TV’, and audio, what-was-once ‘radio’.

That just as their TV schedules are now opened up to independent video production houses, so too must their website be…

‘Contract out’ niche areas – I don’t know, League One football… – to the people that can; that rather than employing 00s of people in the MailBox on a Sunday to transcribe BBC Radio audio clips into the written word, farm that out… ‘out-source’ it to provincial newspapers… treat them as ‘independent production houses’ and drive revenue and traffic out into the hands of people whose very survival is now under dire threat.

Simply dishing out your iPlayer in the hope that this will persuade the politicians to lay off all the top-slice talk because look, you’re sharing your content… that ain’t enough.

That’s a one way street.

‘But it must adhere to the standards the BBC expects…’ will be the refrain; that no-one actually writes copy as PC and proper as they do…

I think most provincial newspaper houses – or home in the case of www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity – is more than capapble of leaping through any such ’standard’ hoop.

It’s more a case of the spirit being willing; of recognising that a link has two ends to it; I give you this and in return, you give me that… and by collaborating individually together, we’re both the better off.

How long we have to wait for that particular penny to drop in the current climate of poison and fear is, alas, anyone’s guess.

The spirit of co-operation is sadly lacking as the chill waters of the North Atlantic start to lap around our knees.

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