Clear Signs Where the Future will Not Be

Lot’s of stuff happening in my small world. Seems sometimes so chaotic and endless — lots of the signs lately have been so negative — and I am not enjoying it. Like I guess everybody, I’d like to keep my world nice, clean, organized — small, even. In two words: under control. No wonder I enjoy being in a sailboat so much…And landing on this turmoil called Finnish media scene after a beautiful summer on the islands has been quite a shocker.

But suddenly I am realizing that there might be some hope after all. There are some intel­ligent people out there — asking the right questions — and sometimes providing answers as well. Intel­ligent conver­sation, smart comments — amidst this “how-do-I-get-more-eyeballs-and-somebody-to-pay-for-it-with-minimal-investment” ‑BS that everybody in the mainstream media seems to be focusing on.

Peter Forsgård wrote a very good and interesting post (in Finnish only) and it is absolutely worth reading. He discusses this current trend the publishers have of demanding all rights for past, present and the future work, no compen­sation for this, legal respon­si­bility to the photo­grapher for all the mistakes that might lead to litigation…

Basically, A‑lehdet (a major publisher in Finland) is offering — no, demanding — the same BS Aller intro­duced in the summer (as I commented in my Sleazeball ‑post). A‑lehdet tops the demands of Aller by requesting that you could not work for anybody else without their permission (a clear violation of our present laws of what consti­tutes an employer/employee ‑relationship vs. a b‑to‑b relationship) and they also demand full disclosure on the fees paid.

In plain English: “We want everything: past, present and the future. We will not pay for it accor­dingly. You will not work for anybody else unless we say so. And you shut the f… up or we sue your ass.”

Nice. Good starting point for a fruitful business relationship… I suggested the “Sleazeball prize 2010″ to Aller, but A‑lehdet is doing good job as a runner-up. Remains to be seen what SanomaNews comes up with — as they surely will.

A comment in my “Deathwatch of Our Daily Print” inspired my headline. This person (who is not working in media) had heard rumors about these “deals” offered and concluded his comment by saying: “Quite a clear sign where the future will not be”. And he nailed it with that.

Talking of great commentary, Adam Monag­han’s comments on Art and how it relates to e.g. this annoying and despicable copycat problem I was describing in my previous post are a true gem. Adam has a way with words and his sincere passion for art and unders­tanding the impor­tance of original work is beauti­fully expressed. Thank you for sharing that — I truly appreciated it.

But one of the nicest surprises I’ve had lately was opening Journa­listi (The Journalist) yesterday evening and finding the article by Katri Porttinen called Pieniä Puroja (Small Brooks) , discussing the present situation of our tradi­tional media and the web in Finland. Lots of hard work done for the background inves­ti­gation, lots of research, several people inter­viewed, and ample data to back it up. For the first time ever, I see such in-depth writing about this in Finland — I immediately sent her a “thank you” ‑note for a great job done.

A small comment, however: I disagree with the implied focus of the article — or should I say with the false presumption it makes by not stating it: that this is somehow a playground only for the “tradi­tional print”. Our second biggest and succesful portal is MTV3 — (origi­nally) a TV-channel. MTV3 has the asset that they do not have the excessive weight of an archaic print product on them and thus they don’t have to try to push the abridged “the-500-words-plus-a-horizontal-shot” ‑version of the print article into the web.

Nonlinearity

One important point is also worth noting: compared to e.g. MTV3, the print has presently (- but only presently -) one huge asset which is often neglected and nobody writes about: Print is nonlinear by nature.

For decades, the print has been “educating readers” to read non-linearly. Headlines, pics, leads, graphs… Every reader has a choice to make on the array of available media/chunks/approaches as to what to focus on. Some prefer text, some pictures, some graphics, captions, etc. This sets — or has set — the print apart from e.g. TV.

A sidenote: think about how TV is often used nowadays, i.e the phenomen of channel hopping? Is that the desire for non-linearity trying to find a form of existence?

And then, see what the print does — or did: when the time came a couple of years ago to think what would be “the thing” to do in the web they come up with, yes: VIDEO — the most linear form of narration there is(actually, you should call it HOMEVIDEO — as the quality is so below par in most cases). More about this later — but my point being: the print would have had a good shot had they acted accor­dingly; presently, the print still might have a shot.… but each passing week, each passing month,they are losing it more and more.

“Sanoma­lehtien johdossa ei ollut ymmär­rystä siitä, miten media­maailma kehittyy”
“The CEOs of our print did not understand the development of the media”

- says Turo Uskali, a researcher, as quoted in this Katri Portti­nen’s excellent article. But: yes, they did not understand, that is obvious — do they now?

I’ve heard couple of inter­views of some the top CEOs and their quotes on the new “iPad-era” — as they call it — and frankly, I would not hold my breath.

The article further quotes Pasi Kivioja from the National Association of Newspapers saying: “No, we are not going to do anything drastic — we have been looking into this for 15 years, but there is still no clear answer” .

He is simply stating the status quo. Yes, AND? Hello? Wouldn’t you agree that it is about the time to actually do something — at least to try to do something?

“Tunte­maton Sotilas” (The Unknown Soldier) is a book I guess almost everybody in our country has read — with the possible exception of maybe these CEOs? Remember the line “Ei saa jäädä tuleen makaamaan! (Don’t just lie still when you are being shot at)?” This is what the print is doing… which is sort of irony of the words, as the print — with a very few excep­tions — is NOT doing anything.

The Print is Immortal?

This still seems to be the prevailing attitude in Finland. To somebody (like me) coming from psychology background, that is about as clear a case of classic freudian denial as you’ll ever see. See the stats of circu­lation in Finland for the past four years: HS ‑11,2% IS ‑24,4% IL ‑9,1% Keski­suo­ma­lainen ‑9,7% Kaleva ‑7,8% TS ‑4,6% AL ‑3,1% etc.

Hmm, now… Is it only me, but maybe — just maybe — like NOW would be a good time to actually DO something?

Arthur Sulzberger Jr (owner and CEO of The New York Times)admitted to Huffington Post in September that in the printed form The New York Times would cease to exist in the future. How about that Helsingin Sanomat of ours?

Compared to NYT our HS is a very, very small. And thus downscaling HS is much harder — if not impos­sible — if one wants to maintain any standards. The steady decline of minus 11,2% in the past four years is really, really drastic. For NYT it would mean — yes, a lot more money lost, but it would not touch the “vital organs of existence” — if you allow the strong figure of speech — but for HS, it does.

I set my Deathwatch to 2015 and 2020 couple a weeks ago. As we are approaching the end of September, you could call this a quarterly check: I will definitely not take it back. On the contrary, I would actually like to hasten the clock a bit.

“Surely Hesari (HS) cannot go… I like my paper and the coffee in the morning, surely it cannot…” Guess how many times have I heard that? From middle-aged people like me. But: here’s the catch: there are less and less these people every year. It is a matter of relatively short time.

Read that sentence again: “Surely HS cannot…”

I remember my undergrad English teacher explaining me the diffe­rence between the words “certainly” and “surely”: “You know, Kari, with “surely” there always remains a certain element of doubt”. Each and every comment I have had on this, it has always been with “surely”, not “certainly “(or the Finnish equivalent) — and a tone full of doubt.

We all sense it — the majority is not just ready to admit it. Denial ad infinitum… or ad nauseam, as one of my favourite professors in the university used to say…

Let me finnish with a brilliant quote from Terry Heaton’s PoMo (it makes always excellent reading — today I also owe my opening quote by Leonard Sweet to Terry):

“Assump­tions drive much of the way we think. Whenever assump­tions prove false, like many of those associated with adver­tising, entire belief systems can change in the twinkling of an eye, even though the die has been cast for a long, long time. This is my fear for tradi­tional media, and it forms the basis for medias’ real doomsday scenario”.

I am sad to admit but I so totally share his fear.