I am Mainstream (71 of 90)

I’m angry.

Well, angry isn’t exactly what I am. It’s not Hulk Smash anger. It’s some weird combination of frustrations, annoyance, alone-ness and emptiness wrapped into a people sandwich.

Why?

The continued insistence that the world that I exist within – this nebulous world of technology – is somehow not part of the mainstream.

***

I should back up, though, because this anger isn’t new. It’s quite old.

In 2002 when Wired News was undergoing a transition period, the management asked for suggestions about what should be done. A suggestion box of sorts.

For which I wrote a several-page, single-spaced Jerry Maguire memo extolling the power of the people, the emergence of the read-write Web and publishing tools that enabled us to give voice to our readers. Blogs, I said, should become a central component of our strategy. We should encourage our readers to write about technology on our site, we should invite them behind the scenes to help us craft and formulate stories.

It was, I argued, unconscionable that Wired News was not engaging with readers online. That we were acting as the High Priests (to paraphrase Steven Levy) of Information.

I was quite proud of that memo.

A few days later, my boss took me aside and said: “Blog are nothing more than glorified home pages, Brad.”

I knew my time at Wired News was over. (That years later, blogs and reader-collaborated reporting became the backbone of WN’s operation has not gone lost on me.)

***

Today, though, fight resurfaced because of a discussion about discussions.

It started, as it has always started for the last decade, with some traditional media company (e.g. The Washington Post) announcing the implementation of a system (e.g. commenting tiers) that the traditional media hails as a positive step forward in the business despite the fact that these systems have been in place for nearly a decade all over the Web.

And journalists in the world discuss this – the Post’s decision – with an cavalier attitude towards reality and facts. As if not knowing about these other systems, about the progress made in online communities and digital business models, is okay because – well, it happened outside of the “mainstream”.

To which I reply, as I have always replied: What the hell mainstream do you live in?

Slashdot (and this is but one example) has more than 5.5 million readers and comment-ors each month. For the record, that is more than the Boston Globe, the Cincinnati Enquirer, The Dallas Morning News, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Fort-Worth Star Telegram, The Rocky Mountain News, The Detroit Free Press…well, every newspaper except the New York Times according to the Newspaper Association of America.

The fact the my peers have gleefully ignore communities such as these for more than a decade is, to quote Will Ferrell: mind-bottling.

When I hear statements that nobody has figured out how to make money in digital communities, I want to scream: are you serious? Because what digital communities do you think aren’t making money?

I know Google’s move into an auction market advertising hasn’t worked. Neither has eBay’s gambit for buying and selling goods. Lord knows Amazon doesn’t make money.

But if revenues and money spent is going to be local instead of national, then it’s important to see how people are selling communities: This one, this one, or read about any number of them here…you get the idea.

People are making money all over the Web. But certainly not an industry that willfully and blissfully explains to people that nobody in the mainstream has figured out these business models.

But we also know how to build communities, how to create businesses on top of unlocked content and the kinds of business models that don’t work. (Disclosure: I wrote these columns for the AEJMC Hot Topics: Tech Meme section, so read at your own risk.)

***

So I again cheer for the demise of the traditional media as we know it.

I do not cheer for the end of ideas and journalism and media. I cheer for the demise of institutions and institutional-think. Because it is broken. Beyond repair I suspect. They talk of pay walls and banner ads and audience metrics, believing that these are the ways money is made online in an environments.

Surely money can be made in this way, but not sustainable-y so. (What, for instance, happens when the print product goes away and all content is behind a pay wall? Or if the print product is not read by new generations, rendering that “brand” obsolete? What if you have a pay wall and nobody knows you exist?)

So I retreat back to the Cultural Gutter, the happy place where netizens and webizens live. Outside the mainstream. Just the tens of millions of us. Minding our own business.

Together.

In the mainstream.