On Sat, 30 Sep 2006 09:37:51 +0100 (BST), bonobashi wrote: > Very briefly, while the overt aim is to 're-position' TIME > magazine, the covert one is stated clearly, almost too clearly to > make it covert - that of reaching a different cross-section of > readership, thereby attracting a different level of advertising. > > Let's take a look at what happens next. Advertisers (other than > some hypothetical constructs who have read C. K. Prahalad) like to > advertise to big spenders, the heavy hitters. So what are they > trying to do? How about edge closer to The Economist in terms of > marketing strategy? Get the readership profile further up the > economic ladder?
If that were a rational strategy, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart would be small companies, right? You can make just as much money selling a quotidian necessity to the public as selling a luxury to the rich. > Does the news-stand or subscription price matter? No, not > really. [...] So we land up paying less for rich content, paying > more for dumb content, and we also land up pushing the rich stuff > at the well-off, while the dumbed down content goes to the less > affluent. > > So where are we on our own little private argument? > > '...not every improvement in the status quo needs to save the world > in order to be recognised...': > Is it an improvement? I thought rather the reverse. Of course, it > depends on your point of view. If you are the lucky one getting the > more diversified news that you want, at a lower price, because some > other guys/dames might just buy a Bentley after reading its ad, it's > an improvement. >From my point of view, if better information becomes available (and, perhaps, the river of pseudo-news that is Time Magazine today dries up) it's a good thing. That's not just because I want "more diversified news" for myself, but because I want to live in a society where everyone has good information, and I especially want to live in a society where everyone has the opportunity to get good information. If people, especially the "less affluent", have to pay less for rich content and more for poor content, that makes it more likely that they'll get the rich content --- not less! So this seems like an improvement in the status quo to me. You could use the same argument against public libraries, for goodness' sake. This passage from the original article reads like unfounded speculation: > As wealthier, more news-focused audiences leave mainstream outlets, > those outlets will be forced to reach out to different groups to > fill the holes in their audience - groups that probably have lighter > definitions of news. In other words, a small group of coverage-rich > news media will get richer while the rest get poorer in their > content. Isn't Time almost the very definition of "the rest"? What "news" magazine currently exists with a "lighter" definition of news --- maybe Reader's Digest? USA Today? Maybe things are worse outside the US? And I'm not buying this argument either (from bonobashi, who somehow insists on attaching their real name to their email address): > Location, for one; changes, subtle or otherwise, in size, shape, > use of font, many other things, indicative of 'suitability' or > otherwise of the magazine for reading by Jogeshwar Dutta. Maybe some Jogeshwar Duttas (I guess that means the common man?) will want to read People or Vogue or Penthouse (does it even still exist?) instead of Time or the Economist or Salon.com or the New Yorker. The problem I see is that Time, in the past, has been an impediment to access to news, by masquerading as a newsmagazine. Apparently Time thinks that actually becoming a newsmagazine is a better move now. Back to the original post: > Hmm. I thought the whole point I tried to make was that the > improvement, associated with pricing rather than a decision to write > better for the sake of writing better, and associated with decisions > about the level and quality of material that people should read at > different income levels, are decisions, taken by myriad, nameless > individuals, but taken on moral and political bases which lead to a > rather predictable conclusion. And that is to widen the gap. It doesn't sound to me like Time thinks it can determine what level and quality of material people will read at different income levels --- it sounds like they feel that their material is not of the level and quality that people at a certain income level are willing to read. It sounds like they feel that they must raise the level and quality of their material in order to appeal to the wealthy, with associated benefits for everyone. What moral and political bases do you have in mind? > And as young-fella-me-lad Srini pointed out, if you and I weren't > rich (=time to spare on our hands), we would be queuing up at the > ration shop, or digging ditches at a Food For Work programme, or > something equally Stakhanovite in character, rather than punching > keys at each other. The poor people I've met in the US don't have much time on their hands, except waiting at bus stops. The poor people I've met in South America are largely rural, and they seem to have a lot of time on their hands. They just can't afford keys to punch at each other --- due to a lack of money, not a lack of time or some dislike of conversation. (Of course conversation is not necessarily dialectic.)
