Spending an hour talking to Jon Katz, who writes “Media Rant” for HotWired, the Web site run by Wired Magazine, is like spending an hour with someone who has been to the future and somehow found his way back. What he’ll tell you will amaze, invigorate and terrify you all at the same time — especially if you happen to work in the media business, particularly newspapers. It’s not that Katz is a futurist. Nor is he a Cassandra. It’s just that there is no one writing today who can so surgically pinpoint the problems of media in the late 20th Century and what they must do in order both to survive and be relevant.
A couple of years ago Katz threw the newspaper business into a tizzy with his column, “Online or Not, Newspapers Still Suck.” More recently, two columns on the same subject have become the focal point for discussion among newspaper types, particularly those of us who toil in the on-line world. Basically, Katz accuses newspapers of being “ugly, irrelevant, passive, dull, and pompous,” and “the least competitive and appetizing offering in the information spectrum.” Katz believes newspapers should stop messing around on line and take the money to fix the real problems that plague papers.
Why would someone who was so “on line” himself be so opposed to newspapers moving in that direction? I called him and asked.
The biggest problem that newspapers have when it comes to the on-line world is, to put words in Katz’s mouth, they still don’t get it.
“Papers have to think about whether they need to go digital and why,” says Katz. “Just repurposing old content doesn’t work. They don’t make newspapers better, or more creative or more useful. All these papers spending billions of dollars on Web sites would be better off if they hired more reporters and did better reporting.”
An on-line edition, Katz says, should add a dimension for readers that doesn’t detract from the original print product. That dimension is interactivity. And the reason that newspapers shy away from interactivity is because it not only alters the relationship between the vendors of news and the consumer, it also alters the balance of power, taking from the vendor and giving more to the consumer.
Katz knows of what he speaks. His column is instantly available to millions around the world. Since Katz includes his E-mail address and invites people to write him back, he is constantly bombarded with replies. On average, he receives 50-100 messages a day, most of which he answers. When he writes a more controversial piece, that can rocket to 300-500.
But here’s his secret. He doesn’t consider answering E-mail as something separate. It is an essential part of his column. “Sometimes I say it’s like being tied to the back of a truck and dragged through downtown Manhattan,” he jokes. “But what it really does is make you think about every single thing you write. It stretches you as a writer.”
Katz also notes that since a column can live in cyberspace for years, you are never able to just “leave it behind.” When he wrote columns for Rolling Stone and New York magazine, the feeling always was that the column was done once it was in print. But on line, a column is always a “new beginning,” since it can work its way around the Internet, from chat groups to forums to E-mail postings, etc.
And what that does, Katz says, is change the relationship between the journalist and the consumer.
“That is why papers fear interactivity. It’s the idea of disagreement. It takes power away from the writer and gives it to the reader. When I write my columns, it’s not like I’m writing for The New York Times, where every piece is seen as the revealed word. I’m continually exposed as a fuzzy thinker, as someone who can be wrong. I’m constantly changing my mind, and learning more about what I write, based on the interactions I have with my readers. So I’m less powerful than a traditional columnist, but still more powerful than most writers. But the difference is that my readers are more powerful than those who read more traditional columns.”
As for me, I don’t think it’s a mistake for papers to repurpose content on Web sites and use that content to find new ways to reach new people. People still want to read news, even on line, and there’s plenty of statistical material to back that up. But Katz is absolutely right about interactivity and its central role in a newspaper’s Web site. Or in a newspaper, period. lnteractivity is the “magic bullet” that papers have been searching for since circulation began to drop in the 60’s.
Because the real truth of journalism is that for all we say we’re interested in what the average Joe and Jane think, we’re really more interested in what we think ourselves — since we think we’re always right. And we prefer that our readers agree with us, rather than engage us. The on-line world presents us with the opportunity to change that dynamic, if we’re smart enough and brave enough to do it.
