We’ve all heard pitches like this before: If you value the media, buy it.
Columns and reports around the new and old media lately have espoused a pay-for-access model on the net that reflects how the media has functioned for a few centuries. I agree, but I’m not going to repeat that sentiment.
But how many of you — students in particular — actually buy the products for which you aspire to work?
If you’re like I was as a student, your daydreams drift to National Geographic contracts, Time covers, regular newspaper paychecks, magazine spreads, museum collections (and now) online galleries shown by major URLs. We want this work. We want recognition for seeing the world intensely and making compelling images that touch our readers. And we most certainly want to get paid for it.
We lament that budgets are tight, outlets for work are small or underpaid, and jobs are disappearing. And not that our subscriptions would make even the slightest dent in the problems of the media, but I see a hypocrisy in our actions. Wish as we might to earn money from the media for doing good work, do we actually buy those products?
Tough morning love for the Journal and the Times.
I looked down at coffee-slopped, crumb-scattered pages of the papers this morning and smirked.
While we lament, we don’t subscribe. It’s expensive to have the New York Times land on my doorstep each morning, but it’s nothing compared to the money I’ve earned from them in the last 20 years. I am one of those people who saves National Geographics and grabs Time, Newsweek and US News off the grocery store rack to browse over lunch and toss in the recycle bin a half hour later.
I even pick up the local free “shopper” rag in any town I find myself because you can learn a lot about a community from what they’re selling.
Why do that when I can get most of that stuff on the Web for free?
Because I can slop breakfast or lunch all over them without having to send hardware in for repair. I can flip through copies as the Thousand Island drips from my reuben, smearing all over the latest Nachtwey essay. I scribble notes in the margins on stories I’d like to chase. I cut out and tack up images that inspire me. I roll them up and stuff them in my back pocket while I stroll. I relish that the ads don’t pop up, flash, scroll, or shout at me. And if still I had a birdcage…
Partaking of the local papers and a café cortado in one of the Buenos Aires' endless confiterias.
But the reasons for you should be deeper than old-fashioned practicality. We need to be steeped in images to produce good work. We need to know what is being done out there. We need to have our mental libraries filled with ideas to use, alter or steal outright.
You can do that well on the Web too. It’s a magnificent at-your-fingertips resource with better volume of material presented in more interesting forms. There you have instant and unprecedented access to the entire world’s media. It’s a beautiful thing. But I know that many of you don’t really even look there, and fewer pay for content.
Spend time with the media no matter the form. Proudly pay what you can for the great work being done out there. Browse, explore, slop, spill, clip, print, pay a little. Consume what you hope to produce for yourself — from the scrappy local paper to Newsweek. And by doing so, your ideas and understanding of our craft grow. And you do your tiny part to help the media recover.
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I did have a bird many years ago, and we would play “Birdcage Bingo” with my clips. I’d slip them into his cage and let him tell me what of my work he liked and what he didn’t in a game that was a simple variation on cow pasture bingo. Maybe someday I’ll try that with the Web…
Perfesser Kev 