Ecco Homo: Indy media's long, repetitive suicide note

The mark of the great editor is imagining the reader rather than identifying with the journalist.

A rough translation of Nietzsche’s aphoristic rant about “moralists”: “And what does he [the moralist] do? He paints a picture of himself upon the wall and exclaims ‘Ecco Homo’ (‘Behold the Man!’)”.

The point was that when mad old Nietzsche’s “moralist” wanted a template of perfect human, the moralist described himself. “If you wish to be happy, imitate me!”

With the exception of (a) niches that talk to themselves, and (b) The Conversation (more later), when people say “indy media” they mean “independent political media”. There have been plenty of the latter launched and failed in Australia over the years. And they fail with monotonous regularity.

Why?

Because nobody gives two tenths of a shit. At bottom, people at large just don’t care about what journalists and enthusiasts think are the Big Political Stories.

Really.

If you decide that you’re going to filter every fucking story through a prism of trying to predict the next election, you will fail. Go broke. Lose readers. Big time.

As is happening right now to Fairfax and News.

Because only a tiny handful of the readership – the ones that happen to fit your template – actually care. They’re busy with life, and – sorry to say this – “news” really is entertainment.

I cannot pretend that I am the Exemplar of Successful Editorship. But I know this: if the editor can’t imagine the reader beyond a tiny prism, that editor’s publication will fail.

Fast.

Take another look at the declining readership of “mainstream” news outlets, and then look at their content. The more the MSM aligns itself with politics – “we’re the newspaper of the conservative / progressive” – in Australia, at least, the fewer the readers.

The more that mainstream news decides that non-political stories – science, technology, censorship, national security, Internet trolling – can only be viewed through a political prism, the less people actually care about the story. There’s another post there, but not now.

My point is this: too many journalists have too little imagination. They can easily imagine the meaning of the words “hit magnet”, but they can’t imagine a reader that doesn’t look like them.

Back to indy media. Whether trivial or Big and Worthy, attempts at independent media are always politics-heavy. Why? Because politics is the interest of the players – not of the readers.

Why do they fail? Because politics is the obsession of the players – not of the readers.

There’s no reason I can think of why an indy media source couldn’t throw in crime, sport (most sports could benefit from journalists that aren’t PR captives – just watch, for example, how relentlessly soccer specialists in the mainstream pursue the crusade of eliminating the word “soccer” from the world), technology, science … even bloody fashion. Or movies, entertainment, arts, music…

But “indy media” is filtered through the journalists’ Ecco Homo prism that it’s all about politics. And it will keep failing until someone’s imaginative enough to imagine the wild world outside – or it runs out of suckers to blow their money.

Oh, about The Conversation. It’s falling prey, in my opinion, to the misapprehension that everybody wants to get Another Authoritative Opinion about politics or economics.

That’s readership poison, in the long term. In my opinion. And there’s no guarantee that I’m free of Ecco Homo – your mileage may vary.

Postscript:  It's fashionable among publishers, journalists and commentators to detest the Huffington Post as a re-linker and re-purposer of content without original input. I won't enter that debate, but will offer this thought: HuffPo gets breadth, for all of its sins. That breadth is successful. If you want politics, it's there. Sport? Got it. Celebrity wardrobe malfunctions? Check. Even science, in case someone discovers the Higgs boson and it gets a pile of hits.

It's kind of the Reader's Digest for a more cynical, no-syndication-fee era.

Maybe the next challenge is to do HuffPo's breadth - with real journalism behind it. Just my two cents' worth.

Postscript to the postscript: Maybe Malcolm Fraser had the best advice to editors. "Get politics off the front page." Certainly leading every issue, Web or print, isn't doing the job. There are plenty of red-hot crime stories out there: perhaps someone should try that as a lead - without the obligatory sound-bit of a political bromide about "making the streets safe" for someone.  

Postscript to the postscript to the postscript: My wife just reminded me of one of her first lessons in journalism. Forgive the stereotype, but she calls it the "Turkish grocer test": if that reader can't read it or isn't interested, you lose lots of readers fast. 

Defending what’s true against what’s fair

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The problem with regulating journalism is that it will mostly protect the wrong people – because the biggest failings with journalism happen when it decides to be too “fair” to people, and unfair to the truth, or to the reader.

Neither today’s Press Council system, nor what is proposed by the government, will do a damn thing to – as Twetter and blogger Mr Denmore puts it – protect the public.

To quote him fairly: “Just as the bill for banks' risk-taking is left with taxpayers, damage from lousy media standards is felt by the public they claim to defend”

This is perfectly true. Unfortunately, the main ways in which the public can be protected aren’t touched by media regulation.

I give you two examples, one hypothetical, the other real.

The Hypothetical

Imagine that a new “faith healer” arises somewhere near, say, Byron Bay. Possible media responses include ignoring him; denouncing him; hailing him; or “playing it straight” – giving the faith healer a platform with a handful of experts to offer “balance”.

The only sane options – the ones that don’t put your readers at risk of dying of cancer, for example – are to ignore the quack, or denounce him. Denunciation will almost certainly bring down the wrath of a regulator charged with upholding the nebulous values of “fairness” and “balance” rather than truth.

Meanwhile, a journalist who hails the quack as a savior will never suffer the wrath of a regulator; nor will a “balanced” journalist – but both of these will write the kinds of stories that will one day kill people.

The Real 

When Tim Johnstone of FirePower fame first claimed to have a pill that would give you 100 miles-per-gallon performance (just add it to your petrol tank!), there was only one simple piece of research that any journalist needed: find a university chemist and ask him.

Nobody did. Until the whole thing came crashing down, there was no interest in debunking – or, equally effective in the presence of a quack, ignoring – the story. Instead, a host of “business” journalists (which all too often means “stenographer to CEOs”) wrote about Johnstone’s deals, and sports journalists (which nearly always means “off in the dumb kids’ ghetto”) documented his sports sponsorships.

The deals and sponsorships were build on shit: there was no technology, merely a lame attempt to build a Ponzi scheme on the back of brain-donor investors and AusTrade money.

As with quack medicine: journalist could have refused to publicize the scam; they could have (and did) hailed it; they could have denounced it; they could have (and did) try to “play it straight”.

Nobody ignored the story – once there’s “a story”, it doesn’t get ignored, because the editors (all of whom need to be emasculated for their willingness to publicize FirePower before the fall) can just assign the story to some other sucker*.

(*When the story comes with champagne, air travel, celebrity brush-with-fame and glad-handing, few journalists let it be assigned to someone else.)

Some hailed it; some “played it fair”; both varieties were responsible for helping suck investor dollars into a lie.

Until Gerard Ryle, nobody went for the jugular. Nobody denounced Johnstone outright. Nobody denounced the non-science behind his claims.

Until FirePower’s collapse, as far as I can tell, neither the existing nor the proposed media “regulation” regimes would have defended the public. Johnstone would have had a better chance at arguing he’d been treated “unfairly” than a journalist at defending “truth”.

And: neither the existing nor the proposed media regulation environments give a member of the public a comeback against damage caused by a publisher peddling utter shit in the pursuit of clicks.

Any close reading of the Press Council’s decisions will hint that the Tim Johntones of the world can play “fair” as a trump card over “true”. Politicians can bluff the council four hands out of five. Neither is a good argument for any kind of media regulation beyond the laws of defamation.

Anybody can get an outright lie up in the mainstream press, and get it a good hearing, and wrap the Emporer’s cloak of “fairness” as an unvulnerable defense. Who defends the truth?