What, you think the iPad hitting stores on Easter Weekend is a mere coincidence?
Nope. The media gods have conspired. Sure, the venerable Wired magazine would be all over it. And of course Laptop mag would hype the inevitable if not wholly simplistic "iPAD v. NETBOOK" war. But there's a reason why the iPad and Steve Jobs were on the cover of not just Time magazine ("Inside Steve's Pad") but also Newsweek, with this breathless, omniscient headline: "What's So Great About The iPad? Everything. How Steve Jobs Will Revolutionize Reading, Watching, Computing, Gaming -- And Silicon Valley." The iPad has the Obama touch. As the noted media columnist Howard Kurtz pointed out: "When was the last time that Time and Newsweek went with the same cover subject whose name wasn't Obama?"
The iPad-mania didn't stop there. The ever-sardonic Stephen Colbert played his part, teasing his studio audience with an Oprahesque: "Everyone look under your chair! Cuz everyone here tonight....gets a picture of me holding my iPad." In the past three months alone, the New York Times and the Washington Post, respectively, have written 80 stories and 23 stories containing the word "iPad."
For many of us in the mainstream media, the Messiah in the form of a tablet has arrived. The Resurrection will come with the help of a sleek, futuristic slate -- costing between $500 to $800 a pop (in a country still suffering from economic turmoil) with pre-order sales of some 250,000 (in a country of more than 300 million).
Or maybe not.
"What we're seeing is a desperate wish -- the last gasp of desperation. Editors and publishers and advertisers want to regain control of the media experience that the Internet took away from them. In their minds, this iPad is the magic pill that will make all of this Internet crap go away. Surely, it won't," Jeff Jarvis, the veteran journalist and author of What Would Google Do? told me in a phone interview. Upon reading that Time magazine is charging $5 a month for its iPad app, Jarvis tweeted Friday morning: "Mag iPad prices are delusional: In no form, even engraved in gold, is Time is worth $5/issue." Jarvis followed it up with this tweet, linking to a story in paidContent: "if Time's iPhone app is free & iPhone apps work on iPad, why would I pay $5 for an iPhone app? Naked newsmakers?"
Jarvis added: "What this is really about is control -- control of the experience. They want to regain the package. You bought the magazine. You read the news article. But the link -- the hyperlink, the way people consume media now -- broke that package apart, and there's no putting it back together."
The iPad-saving-the-media hype feeds an already running narrative, Jay Rosen, the influential media critic who writes the PressThink blog, told me.
"Before the iPad came into our sights, there was already a series of headlines and desperate passages: will ______save journalism? There's this search for the savior, and the belief that there is one," Rosen said.
To be fair, the salvation mentality is understandable. Uncertainty looms like a black cloud for media companies. The pricing model is up for grabs, the formatting is up for grabs, the relationship between advertising and editorial content is up for grabs. Lee Rainie, a former newspaper journalist and the founding director of Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, told me: "There's clearly a hope that with the right device, and the right format, that both revenue streams that have sustained newspapers and magazines for decades -- the subscription side, and the advertising side -- will be helped by this new tech gadget."
But as we've noted before in this blog, it's not just about the gadget, it's about the content. Or, more specifically, how the content adapts and evolves in our blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, YouTubing times. Yes, the so-called legacy media companies (print, television, radio) create content -- informative, valuable content, many of it crucial to our democracy. But, for the most part, they fail to realize how their content fits in a larger news ecosystem, one that's being increasingly driven not just by the select few who create the news but the online masses who consume it. And then want to engage with it, question it or tweak it, pass it around, and make it their own.
"The Internet provides the means for communities to share what they know. At no cost. The marginal cost of sharing information is zero," Jarvis said. "We as journalists then have to ask how we add value to that."
We're living in a transition stage -- a very exciting time in which the "me" in "media" continually and more effectively flexes its muscles. The media's resurrection depends on its understanding of that reality. Not on the shiny new iPad.
Follow Jose on Twitter: www.twitter.com/joseiswriting
Jose Antonio Vargas: Steve Jobs and Apple iPad Tablet -- It's the Content, Stupid!
Memo to news organizations and publishers who think the glossy, state-of-the-art Apple tablet is the answer to your prayers. Steve Jobs sent a clear message during the launch of the new iPad: It's the content, stupid!
Jose Antonio Vargas: WATCH: Not Everyone Has The iPad Spirit
Judging from the hype that preceded its arrival -- the cover of Time magazine! and Newsweek! endless chatter from media folks looking for a Messiah to technophiles anxious to get their hands on the latest gadget -- you'd think everyone was clamoring for an iPad. Well, not quite.
Craig Kanalley: iPad Review: It Has Only One Flaw
For millions of Americans right now, the unemployed, the hurting, and for those paying back college loans, the iPad's a tease. You're better off waiting.
Apple's iPad: First impressions
Kindle for iPad vs. Standard Kindle
What's Missing: 5 Things the iPad Lacks
One of first iPad customers gives hands-on review of Apple tablet
http://www.rainydaymagazine.com/RDM2010/Home/April/Week1/RDMHomeApr0410.htm#iPadUnBoxing
Here is the FirstLook:
http://www.rainydaymagazine.com/RDM2010/Home/April/Week2/RDMHomeApr0510.htm#iPadFirstLook
Tomorrow we'll be talking about the iPad accessories you may already have :-)
Sincerely,
RainyDayInterns
1) Actual JOURNALISM instead of mealy mouthed corporate pablum
2) Flash content.
Apple can't help with either of those.
Everything Flash can do can be accomplished by other means. A few years ago, the big buzz was over Java, which is similar to Flash, but turned out to be too slow and buggy. Flash is a resource hog and battery drainer. And Flash is not an open standard. It is owned by one company, Adobe. I'd rather visit we sites based on open HTML standards than be locked into using a proprietary one-company software application like Flash.
Flash video looks beautiful and it's installed on 90 percent of the laptop and desktop machines on the planet.
Apple needs to quit whining and grow up.
But I don't hold out much hope, here it is nearly five years after Blu-Ray and you still can't author one on an Apple machine of any kind.
Everything Flash can do CAN be accomplished by other means but the fact is, Flash is already dominating video, because IT JUST WORKS (sound familiar?)
1. Earn revenue by charging for content.
2. Earn revenue by charging advertisers
The 'gotcha' reporters have helped politicians evolve to avoid answering questions. Both are to blame. Instead of creating a safe place for the truth to be told and accurately reported, the so-called journalists have taken to spinning anything and everything a politician says so that he has to we wary and we now have the 'non-interview' interview where nothing really gets answered. Recall that awful interview Bret Baier had with Obama on Fox. That should be taught in journalism school as a 'don't do this'.
We are going to have to go through the 'eye of the needle' where there is a real breakdown and lack of accurate news until we come out on the other side with a new paradigm, if we can.
The one thing of value is researching, fact-checking, and editing content; things sorely lacking in much internet publishing. So the challenge is how do we make sure we can get well-researched, fact-checked, edited news? I would pay for that, but not as long as it's all free. But that's the transition that needs to be made. It certainly seems to be one that doesn't require big enterprises and lots of capital to do; it requires a few good journalists, and a some paying customers.
there are hard news journalists out there in traditional media....
The problem is that the public is more interested in getting infotainment as news instead of watching/reading real journalists. More people watch commentators and read blogs than pay attention to hard news. It's a fact. Don't blame the media....blame the consumers of it...or better yet....blame no one at all...
Why would I pay so much for news that I get on the iPhone for free? It makes no sense
I think we will see here what we saw when the iPhone first came out and that is a reduction in prices
No way the WSJ keeps its price so laughably high
They wouldn't recognize a trend even if it bit their editors on the buns.
IPAD doesn't do anything at all that can't already be done in some other way, often less expensively, and without sending money to Mr. Jobs and his shareholders.
So the question is, how much of HP is Flash?
Heavens no! Don't want to disturb our customers' comfort zones
They did it with malce, they did it for greed, and they did it out of ignorance, willful ignorance.
There is no way that it can ever be trusted again. Not as long as the big money has control.
Fox is only the worst example, but when stories are based around ad tie-ins, and puff pieces outnumber news from our 2 war fronts by many multiples, you know it's about ratings and profits, not newsworthiness and the need for an informed citizenry for democracy to function