> To take my own little "media role" as an example. Do you > think you could flat plan a magazine so it had pace? (For > that matter, do you even know what a flat plan is?)
I'm sure a quick Google would explain it in words everybody can understand. All the media industries suffer from an overabundance of buzzwords - I'm working in the music industry myself at the moment (student on placement) and it's amazing how quickly you pick up on all of them (and usually have to end up using them to sound even vaguely professional). > Commission features that were interesting, exciting, and got > people to read them? Write entertaining copy? Edit other > people's copy to a high standard? sp - other peoples' copy, not other people's copy. Let's be thankful you're a layout specialist, not a copy editor! Sorry, you left the door wide open there (and I know grammar isn't as important on here, but... I couldn't resist.) ;) > For example, more magazines are > being sold in the UK than have ever been sold before: how > does that fact fit into your view? Interesting you say that - I've noticed that there are a number of stories about new publications that are struggling to establish and retain their foothold in the extremely competitive publishing market in the UK. A couple of years ago, when I worked in a local supermarket's petrol station I used to do the night shifts and every so often along with the paper deliveries would come the trade magazine... And some of the stories in that, very disheartening. I get the impression that the publishing industry is constantly having to cut back and downsize on their more 'experimental' new product launches as it's becoming increasingly hard to find a niche or absorb some of another mag's existing readerbase. > > Try an experiment. Take a copy of FHM. Now replace every > picture in it with images from Flickr - but no professional > photographers allowed. Do you think it will be the same > quality? I'd really like to so you actually do this - because > I know you couldn't. I've seen very professional sites that've sourced their imagery exclusively from flickr - they're few and far between, but they do look very good (and they're not professional photographers, just pro-am). > Oh, and try another little bit of research: How many of the > Top Ten podcasts downloads in the UK on the iTunes Store are > produced by these "ordinary people" and how many are produced > by professional media outfits? Take a look, and come back > with the answer for us, please. I happen to know what it is - > and I suspect you won't like it. I fully agree on the point being made - the pro media outfits are producing the best quality stuff. Not to say that there's some real gems out there; but the established outfits have the industry clout to get the advertisement out, get the word out. The various BBC Radio 1 podcasts are thoroughly pimped to the listeners in countless trails, bumpers and DJ announcements all day every day on their respective broadcast shows. Heck, some of the podcasts even get replayed on Radio 1 in their own dedicated broadcast slots! The magazine podcasts are advertised in their respective print publications, the newspaper podcasts same again. How can you even expect an indie podcast to achieve that kind of mass coverage without some big backers behind it to invest the initial and ongoing advertising costs? People are lazy; they set up a podcast to download and it'll download, and even if they don't actually listen to it (or they listen but donp't like that particular episode) the download will still be registered as a download. They'll keep on subscribing and just hope the next episode is better. So, peoples' laziness will give the podcast more votes than it deserves and artificially distort the Top 10. I never go by top 10s personally because I don't think they're representative of actual quality. Just felt those points needed making... - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
