I. “Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age” by Christopher William Anderson
We live in an age and time when the social and cultural landscapes of different societies, across the globe, are experiencing profound alterations, in the form of recurrent digital and technological interventions. The diverse landscape of ‘media’, which has increasingly emerged as a useful medium for the dissemination of information, as well as for actively engaging with a large audience, cutting across state and national boundaries, has also undergone radical transformation, almost organically, in the digital age.I would recommend Anderson’s text ‘Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age’, which makes a significant contribution towards not only understanding these changes, but also developing an approach for studying them. The book is a versatile one, written in a lucid and engaging format and interspersed with theoretical frameworks and references, thereby making it accessible to a wider audience with disparate disciplinary orientations. In part, the text has a historical narrative, elucidating on the initiation of online media during the late 1990s, followed by the incidence of bankruptcy of ‘The Philadelphia Inquirer’ and ‘The Philadelphia Daily News’ in 2009, and concluding with a discussion on the attempts to revive and reinvent journalism in the light of changing epistemologies that the digital era had introduced in its wake.
Anderson uses an ethnographic approach in conducting research at media organisations in Philadelphia. With a primary focus on the changing landscape of news production, the book delineates the trajectory of decline in the city’s traditional print media and the gradual transition to what the author calls the ‘age of convergence’. Through an interesting choice of ethnographic research methodology, the book documents lived experience of news workers grappling with the altered media landscape, one in which not only has the framework, within which the business of journalism operates, undergone transformation, but the processes of producing and consuming of the ‘content’ as well. Further, Anderson does not perceive news organisations as isolated or singular institutions. They are considered to be part of a larger ‘journalistic ecosystem’. Anderson’s use of the phrase is intended to convey to the readers, the complexities that abound the entire course of news making, especially in the era of digitisation. At a time when ‘convergence’ is being emphatically emphasised, Anderson demonstrates how news production can no longer restricted to the enclosed space of the news room and to specialised professionals. Quite the contrary, it is being carried out through a set of activities, both diverse and dispersed in nature, by organisations and individuals from a range of different platforms. The book therefore, serves to illustrate how the understanding of the processes of news production and consumption in the networked age requires necessarily requires a networked approach.
II. “Art & Copy” directed by Doug Pray
‘Art & Copy’, a documentary film directed by Doug Pray, is a foray into the minds of some of the most influential advertising creatives and entrepreneurs in the United States, who had been successful in mastering the ‘art of persuasion’. Their seemingly boundless creativity had a profound impact on the American cultural milieu, and which eventually transpired into the ‘creative revolution’ of the 1960s. The film featured advertising legends to the likes of Bill Bernbach, George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, Lee Clow, Hal Riney and others, in an attempt to familiarise these stalwarts to an audience beyond the advertising industry. Advertising, as a media segment, is not merely a story of ‘art’ serving capitalism that id growing in mediocrity. Doug Pray highlights the successive transitions that the advertisement business encountered in revamping their working strategies in particular, and redefining the vision of the industry as a whole. Advertising sought to create a significant social impact by selling selling not just products, but emotions, ideas and lifestyles to its audience. The story of advertising foregrounds the urge of these creative minds to place their ideas into the public domain, in order to elicit a ‘desired’ reaction. They attempt to cut through social traditions that get in the way of a product and turn it around into a positive thing. The end goal is not simply to sell a product, but to make the statement that: advertising can and should be both, revolutionary and subversive. Doug Pray portrays the transition from print to moving print or digital, in the field of advertising, with the ultimate aim of providing the viewers with a theatrical experience. His depiction of this creative journey also provides a historical insight into how the people’s perception of the world as ‘dull’ in the post world-war years gave way to the creation of a market that capitalised on fun and quirky ideas, and which was taken up by this industry, as its social responsibility, to deliver innovative and unconventional ways. The film illustrates how great advertising almost always starts with something ‘true’, one that is representative of mass communal happenings, which the audience is able to relate or connect with. The altered representation of the same mundane objects or occurrence, which strikes a cultural nerve, and still don’t fail to surprise them. The film, portrays therefore, how advertising revolutionises the media industry by manufacturing feelings and experiences, and in doing so, they a create niche cultural milieu, and along with it the aspiration for being part of the created milieu. Students of digital studies and new media would greatly benefit from its astute insights.
III. “Advertising is Dead” with Varun Duggirala
I recommend ‘Advertising is Dead’, an IVM (Indus Vox Media) podcast hosted by Varun Duggirala, the co-founder and content chief at The Glitch, a Mumbai bases creative agency to students of digital studies and new media. The podcast would equip them to deal with relevant real-time issues being faced by the advertising industry in the contemporary times. It foregrounds the recent developments, issues and limitations that the world of advertising, branding, content and media have to grapple with. The industry is increasingly being characterised by one that is in a ‘constant state of flux, and where, much like the world we inhabit, change is the only constant. These string of podcasts foregrounds and attempts to address some of the relevant issues like (i) how traditional modes of advertising get swept away in this new age of ‘digital disruption’, (ii) how to sustain agencies at a time when content is ever-changing and there is an explosion of various mediums or platforms (ranging from Doordarshan to TikTok) through which such content is represented, (iii) how the role traditional mediums, like the radio, change in the digital age, and the like. The podcasts also serve to provide to its listeners, significant caution and awareness about their creative rights by holding elaborate conversations around the the fundamentals of copyright, piracy, intellectual property and licensing.
IV. “Searching for Sugar Man” directed by Malik Bendjelloul
‘Searching for Sugar Man’, a documentary film directed by Malik Bendjelloul, documents a curious case of a Detroit-based singer songwriter, Sixto Rodriguez, who goes missing soon after recording two consecutive albums (1970, 1991), on the Los Angeles-based label Sussex Records. He was rumoured to have died in a spectacular way by committing suicide on stage, during the course of a performance, in front of a large audience. This was, at the time, considered to the greatest suicide in rock history. His albums ‘Cold Fact’ and ‘Coming from Reality’ had somehow found their way to South Africa, at a time when it was stricken with Apartheid. The Government had systematically closed down the entire country, and imposed a militant surveillance over the press and media content. Television and radio platforms were being banned on the premise that they were innately ‘communist’. At a time like this Rodriguez’s music provided to many, the ‘soundtrack of their lives. His music (although completely unintended) became a medium of the anti-establishment messages for people’s revolution in South Africa. He inspired cultural rebels of the time, and became the icon of Africa’s music revolution. The records were banned soon after, which only served to make it all the more popular.
Stephen Segerman, a vinyl records store owner in Cape Town, and Craig Bartholomew, a music journalist, investigated the rumoured death of this American musician. The outcome of the investigation was quite a pleasant one. Rodriguez was discovered to be alive and kicking. He was unaware of the sensation he had become in South Africa (much bigger than ‘Rolling Stones’, ‘Doors’, or even ‘Elvis Presley’ at the time). The film won the Best Documentary Oscar in the year 2013 and Rodriguez went back on stage, touring nationally over the next several years. I would strongly recommend this documentary film to students of digital studies, which illustrates instances of music emerging as a new medium of mass communication at a time when traditional platforms like television and radio had been closed off to the public. It ensationalize music as a medium whose message, though unintended by its creator, had taken on a distinct public character. The film showcases the transition from vinyl records to CDs or compact discs, which was a distinct moment in the media industry as a whole. Lastly, the film served to portray the importance of investigative journalism as a means of combating fake news, which was ensationalized and blown out of proportion.
References:
Anderson, Christopher William. “Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age”. Temple University Press, 2013.
Pray, Doug. “Art & Copy”. Contributed by Kennedy, David, Chad Tiedeman, George Lois, Phyllis K. Robinson, Peter Nelson, Philip Owens, Jeff Martin, Doug Pray, Jimmy Greenway, Michael Nadeau, and Mary Warlick, 2010.
Duggirala, Varun. “Advertising is Dead”. Audio blog post. IVM Podcasts, 2018-2020.
Bendjelloul, Malik. “Searching for Sugar Man”. Produced by Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn, 2012.
