InkTank

Fighting Over the News

Tony Danza becomes a tenth grade English teacher, Lady Gaga goes political and Steven Colbert is a main reason people tuned into the recent immigration hearing.

I read an article the other day titled The World’s Most Influential 16-year-old Bloggers. One of these ‘kids’ made $5, 000 in the first month of launching his blog.

Now I don’t know about everyone else but I feel semi-defeated.

I didn’t spend four years day-dreaming through math classes about becoming a journalist so that I could compete with celebrities and 16-year-olds with a smart phone.  

What is going on?

More importantly what can we do to revert the attention to the actual news media? There is such an availability of mediums and information that I’m beginning to wonder what being a journalist is going to mean when I graduate. I also feel like I have no right to complain because I still have a fighting chance. There are people in news rooms who have spent their post-grad lives making a name for themselves and now have to compete with me; a kid with less experience but a better understanding of converged media.

Why Sony wins the video game wars

Yes. I think Sony wins the video game wars. You will either find this statement (a) entirely credulous since I already sunk $600 into a 60GB Playstation 3 (personal bias revealed) or (b) entirely incredulous, because the Wii is clearly the fastest-selling system, and the XBox 360 has the most marketshare of next-generation games.

Let me start by saying that there is nothing wrong with either of the other two systems. But here are my reasons for this statement.

Set back for the Long Tail

It looks like Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory suffered a setback in the box office this year. For those who haven't heard of it, the Long Tail: "describes the niche strategy of businesses, such as Amazon.com or Netflix, that sell a large number of unique items, each in relatively small quantities." In other words, rather than aiming to sell a large number of a few item, businesses are increasingly aiming to sell a small number of a million items. TIME Magazine recently noted something similar in their article:

"Oscar nominations and old-fashioned word of mouth--earned robust box-office results: Little Miss Sunshine, No Country for Old Men and, most remarkably, Juno, the teen-pregnancy comedy that, on a $7.5 million budget, outgrossed such pricey, massively promoted (and popular) superproductions as Prince Caspian and The Incredible Hulk."

But, the article notes, this year those tiny, niche movies that make ten times what they cost were non-existent. Not a surprise though: -If you've got limited funds and have a choice between seeing a niche movie or a blockbuster, which will you go see? Box offices say it was the blockbuster at least this year. -And let's be serious: when has there, in recent history been a year of Blockbusters like this one: A new Indiana Jones, a new Bond movie, a new Batman movie, Iron Man, Hancock--that's quite a few and that's just the top four. There were fine showings by Momma Mia! and Sex and the City as well. Only exception to the bad showing by niche movies: Fireproof. It was made for half a million and grossed $33 million. By prediction? This was an off-year. You'll see alot more Fireproofs...