Journalists, brands and celebrities.

Rick Waghorn told my journalism class that the survival of newspapers could well be in leaning towards brands rather than just faceless writers or reporters.

Covering football news and issues in Norwich for the Evening News since the early 90s, and now launching his own (so far very successful) footie coverage creation MyFootballWriter.com, I guess he understands the lucrative significance of having a loyal following, living up to expectations, having pundit status, his name recognised independent of his writing – basically being a brand.

And it seems that Waghorn’s observations are spot on, not just in regards to newspapers, but magazines as well. Marie Claire has ‘The Janice Street Porter interview’, More! has started a similar ‘The Alan Carr interview’ regular feature.

I agree that it’s a great idea to pull the readers in, but perhaps there is a fine line between a person who has become a brand based on their knowledge and work in their field (e.g. hard questioner Janice Street Porter, and credit crunch expert Robert Peston), and a mere celebrity taking on an ‘expert’ role.

The Times has Jeremy Clarkson doing its driving section while The Mirror has gotten hold of Richard Hammond, which is fair enough – they both qualify as ‘petrol heads’ and their Top Gear brand goes hand in hand with car and motoring issues.

The Mirror also has Ian Botham on cricket and Stan Collymore on Football; professionals in their chosen sport becoming pundits is nothing new. But Tess Daly, TV presenter most recently on Strictly Come Dancing, writing on “style news and views”? Simply looking good and being a household name is qualification enough for that ‘pundit status’ it seems.

Natmags have recently (August 08) re-branded their celeb magazine Reveal as the “celebrity magazine written by celebrities” where each of the eleven newly employed celebs have been given their own section of ‘expertise.’

There are logical appointments at Reveal such as Martin Lewis (moneysavingexpert.com) writing about money, Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen (remember him off Changing Rooms?) doing homes, and Saturday Kitchen chef and cook book author, James Martin, covering food. All fairly reasonable appointments. But then there’s the slightly more abstract…

Actress and singer, Martine McCutcheon, on beauty – she’s beautiful yes, but a make up artist? A beauty therapist? No. And again, looking good on TV is all the status bubbly, Xtra Factor presenter Holly Willoughby needed to secure her position as “red carpet style” expert. But the strangest appointment of all is yet to come, as the new Reveal Agony Aunt is…Vanessa Feltz.

This is the lady who had a rather monumental meltdown on Celebrity Big Brother, refusing to hand-over a stick of chalk after scrawling intensely contemplative words onto a table while sobbing into a silk leopard print dressing gown (many were questioning her sanity I believe). She annoyed the nation (along with magical gramps Paul Daniels) on ch4’s Celebrity Wife Swap, and recovering alcoholic, Jack Dee, described her as “emotionally unstable.” Despite this however, Reveal have put her in charge of our emotional, life, and relationship problems. Hmm, okay…..?!

I’ve never had a newspaper: fragmentation

I’ve never had a newspaper that I felt attached or affiliated to; not in terms of political ideas, style of writing, news agenda or otherwise.While some read either the Guardian because they have left wing views or the Telegraph because they agree with the conservative ideas and agenda, me? I’m a floater.

I like the Sun because of the shocking headlines, I like the Guardian on a Monday for the media section, I like the Mirror’s website for unusual articles, and I like TelegraphTV for as-it-happens news on demand.

The same goes for magazines, I know countless girls who like the features in Marie Claire, the ‘gossip’ in Heat and the pictures in OK, the feist of Cosmopolitan but the shopping pages of Grazia.

Rather than read just one title a week or month they, and I include myself, read around the titles on the shelf to get all the pages they want, from the publications that do it – the way they want it.

I guess that means we’re already part of the fragmenting audience.

Shane Richmond, Communities Editor at telegraph.co.uk, notes how where communities once used to build around titles, and loyalty with it, the nature of online publications and aggregation tools allow users to now just take the bits they want from media content.

Communities are now building around particular sections of a publication, such as the sport section of telegraph.co.uk, the fashion pages of Grazia, getting the media news delivered to their desktop by RSS from the Guardian, or taking articles from various places and bringing them back to their own forum for debate and conversation.

But I’m not sure it’s ever really been that different, people have always read along the shelf, but so long as the whole publication was still bought I guess no-one really noticed that many of us were only reading a small section, rather than the whole package.

 

Should we look more at porn?

In the 1970’s it was a major driving force behind the home-movie; it was a key (role?) player in the 1980’s battle between Betamax and VHS video; then once again, in 2006, industry insiders were left panting while the porn industry mused over who was going to win the Blue Ray Disc versus HD DVD frisson.

“As goes the porn industry, so goes entertainment generally and technology-based entertainment in particular,” says Bob Jacobson, and he’s very right. It’s been long accepted that a giant deciding factor in whether a new technology will be popular for entertainment-media use, is how well the porn industry ride it.

Ryan Caldwell also puts the quickie development of the internet and broadband down to the demand of porn, and there are many who might agree…

 

 

So, could porn providers again indicate the direction in which media, online entertainment and journalism will shimmy? Possibly.

There have been worries that, just like print media sales, even the rampant cash flow of the porn industry has taken a spanking of late by web 2.0.

Edward Helmore’s article for The Observer has industry sales down by as much as 50%, as online porn perusers find for free what they once paid for.

“Pirated pornography is flooding the internet while thousands of ‘amateurs’ post their activities on websites such as youporn.com and porntube” says Helmore.

“Despite social and professional stigmas a lot of people are putting themselves on the internet. It fits into this era of people expressing themselves,” Regina Lynn, sex drive columnist for Wired, adds in the same article.

Like the current state of journalism, the once untouchable porn industry is at threat from web 2.0, user generated content and online publishing tools, that have shifted the power of publishing from the media giants, into the hands of the consumers.

What are the players in porn going to do next? Go mobile, it seems.

With the release of Apple’s new iPhone 2.0 people can do it (or rather watch others do so) anywhere…on the train, a plane, al fresco…use your own imagination here.

Jeremy Caplan, writing for Time notes that while mobile phone porn has previously been racy texts and “moan tones,” but the iPhone’s video dexterity has seen content swing more towards pictures and short video clips. The internet speed of the iPhone 2.0 looks set to bond the two industries further.

Pornographers have taken the idea of being able to access, say, the news online from any workstation with a browser, to being able to access content from literally anywhere you happen to be with your internet-enabled mobile phone.

Porn purveyor Pink Vision have created a downloadable one-click icon for Apple iPhone home screens, so users can access porn immediately and easily from their phone. While similar company Vivid claim half of their traffic now comes from iPhones.

Mobile phone specific applications then, seem to be where journalism brands need to aim and shoot.