About Dorian Benkoil

http://www.teemingmedia.com

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A Holiday Wish of Gratefulness

Every Friday evening, my family and I light a candle and count some “gratefuls.” These can be mundane happenings of the week or transcendent gifts in our lives: a new birth, health, passing an exam, a new piece of business or promotion, even that we have a meal to share.  The practice is adapted from a friend and former client’s religious tradition. That’s something else I am grateful for: the ability to constantly learn, to be exposed to new and better ways. I’m grateful for fellowship and companionship, for the overflowing enjoyment I can get from a smile or a kind word, and for the ability to do the same for others.

These are all gifts I cherish more than material goods I’m likely to get.  I’m also grateful to business partners, clients, colleagues and people who’ve put so much energy into MediaThon events, and for the smiles and laughter and creative output the events generate. I’m grateful to students I teach and consumers of media I produce and that I can help others make their media more effective.

And I’m grateful that I can wish you a year full of “gratefuls,” abundance and joy.

Dorian

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Why Trump? Ask The Daily Show

Screen Shot 2015-12-02 at 3.35.16 PMMedia scholar Jay Rosen wrote last week of reasons the press is befuddled by Donald Trump’s ascendance even as they call out his bombastic inaccuracies.

Rosen writes that the political press has a weak sense of purpose, suffers “institutional isomorphism” — a sameness across the board — and purports to compete while having “shared assumptions” of what they should and shouldn’t do.

Let me posit another reason Trump is emerging unscathed: The Daily Show. Like SNL, Colbert and John Oliver, Jon Stewart and team turned light on the blind spots of news programming, making “fake” coverage that often hit truths the “real” news shows eschewed.

Stewart was not afraid to show his sense of purpose while his correspondents called out absurdities in the subjects they covered. Stewart would ask politicians, entertainers and authors startlingly pithy questions that “serious” — Jay may prefer “humorless”— reporters are loathe to pose.

The Daily Show mimicked superficial news conventions, the grammar of TV news, while the taking piss out of people who lacked humility and hewed to false objectivity.

“Trump may not be telling the truth, but he’s sure as hell telling their truth,” Rosen quotes Politico’s Glenn Thrush as saying* of the business mogul’s fans. So, too, for The Daily Show. They, to paraphrase Jay’s words, told “people what’s going on … without illusions.”

Twelve percent of Americans said they got their news from the show, “on par” with USA Today and The Huffington Post, the Pew Research Center found.

And it’s into that world, in which the comedic can be more truthful than the real, and “serious” journalists become discounted, that Trump and his ilk can thrive.

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* Corrects earlier version of attribution.

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Doorknobs as Media

When’s the last time you paid for a song? Could we soon ask the same question for tangible goods?

For years, I’ve been saying that every company is a media company. 3D printing could make that more true than ever.

Media makers have to deal with people getting their creations via illicit copies without paying. Soon, 3D printing of objects will get to the point where someone can take pictures of something they like, and print them out for themselves. No muss, no fuss. No purchase!

Tweet from Ad Age, Lowes' DoorKnob Printing

Like your friend’s silverware set? No need to ask where they bought it. Just take some pix and print the knives, forks and spoons out at home. Or, maybe we’ll ask, “Mind if I copy and print out your dress (shoes, handbag)?”

Lowe’s lets customers print parts in multiple materials. That means the home improvement chain could confront  some of the same challenges media companies have for years: Who is taking their “content”? How much money will they lose when someone hacks the design and lets people print the parts at home?

Traditional music companies like Sony and EMI have lost billions of dollars in value due to music fans’ reticence to pay for songs and albums. Many media companies now consider some level of bleed simply a cost of doing business, though some like Netflix are fighting the theft. It’s now unusual for artists to make a real living from music sales. Even the likes of Taylor Swift, in her recent tiff with Apple over the attempt to give her music away, referred to her ability to make a living from performing, not music sales.

And if retailers are letting people print parts, how long is it until people can get those parts — and lot of other items — without going to the store, or ordering from any retailer? How much lost revenue will that mean? Yes, there are plenty of technical hurdles today, and 3D printing is hardly the norm. But long-term (and maybe not as long term as we think), companies that have never had to worry about protecting intellectual property will confront the  same kinds of loss as media companies have for years.

We’ll be confronting a whole new level of “social sharing.”

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