What a tricky business Publishing has become. Everyone is in search of their own sustaining strategy in a market that seems to be still contracting.
There aren’t what is called publications of record now. The trust is gone. You’re identified as one side or the other even if you tried to stay in the center lane. People don’t believe things from what was trusted medical journals to their community papers if they still have one.
It’s kind of funny that when the internet was first gaining popularity people warned about not trusting everything you might read on it. Somehow that has permeated every written word and publication on or off the internet.
And it seems to have turned off new readers because if you’re skeptical to start why would you spend time on a long story? A lot of people at one time would get multiple publications. Many times of varying opinions and positions. I think there is a saying that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
The model for sustaining a publishing business has become a reach for everyone. Especially in print but even broadcast has been shaken to its core. The engine that drives it (advertising) has become an unpredictable beast. Classified and display advertising is what paid for those reporters covering your local courthouse or the fireman from the station down the street who rescued the family pets from a burning home.
It paid for the photographers who took the great shots at the local ballfields of your kids. It paid for the paper and ink that printed it, the postage, or the drivers who brought it to your homes. Well, that cash cow of advertising has left the barn.
And right now, only a few have found the cow and are having trouble getting it back to the barn.
In some ways, it’s been gut-wrenching to watch my newspaper industry once proud and providing an important mission along the way, become a shell of itself, with few left struggling to find their way. So many talented and dedicated people that covered their communities for decades and sometimes a century or more. So much history and knowledge.
A recent person with immense power called a majority of the world’s most respected publications “the enemy of the people” which further eroded any trust. It’s not publications that are the enemy of the people. It’s the people that are now the enemy of the people.
Everyone has their own beliefs and positions and that is a good thing. The trouble is now every other opinion or fact or view is WRONG if it doesn’t align with theirs. And that isn’t right.
Publications make mistakes because people make mistakes. Lots of respected publications go to great lengths to make sure mistakes don’t make it to print. Trying to ascertain the truth and facts with as much knowledge that can be brought to bear at that moment in time. Lawyers and editors fact-check and get verification from multiple sources.
And regardless if these publications printed that the Pope is Catholic you would have some that would say fake news.
After almost 50 years in the business here I am doing my own publishing thing with this blog. I don’t know what tangents I’m going to go off on yet. I hope most of it is focused on my photography and if I can get some good art or carvings together maybe that.
I love sharing my random thoughts and I’m going to try to stay as positive as I can. But life isn’t always that way so from time to time I’m sure I’ll stray.
I know I’m finding the more I do the more ideas I get and the more I have to keep me busy.
Random Thoughts of the Day
- My better half is a good interior decorator.
- Monday is special for a few personal reasons. Both of them are brand new.
- Ideas abound, but time does not.
- Don’t let less-than-perfect tools stop you from getting perfect results.
- Sometimes you just have to appreciate the small accomplishments of the day.