A TABLOID FUTURE

The marketing geniuses hired by print publications to promote their image as an important, lasting medium for advertisers long into the future have come up with an age-old answer to the threat of extinction from the Web -- tabloid journalism. How creative!

Have a look at the stories featured on the fake Newsweek cover, right, of March 21, 2095. Besides the cover story about California's popularity as an island off the North American continent 62 years after the Big Quake and "Clones in the Military: Don't Ask --Don't Tell," the story cover lines read as follows:

Politics: The New Demopublicans
Business: Weekends Reinstated
Religion: Shanghai on just $50K a Day
Science: Cats Develop 10th Life
Sports: Can Yanks Reverse 100 yr. Curse?

The science and sports cover lines really belong to the low-grade mentality of supermarket tabs like News of the World. They long ago infected the newsweeklies with their peculiar fetish for the occult. But c'mon. A-list advertisers don't exactly go for News of the World and its ilk. And by the way, can anyone enlighten me as to what religion has to do with Shanghai on $50k a day? I have no idea.

Here are some other cover lines, according to the Magazine Publishers of America, from "faux" covers of the future:

Parents: "Pregnant at 75: The Risks and Rewards"
Reader's Digest: "Androids v. Clones: Where Do You Stand?"

Travel + Leisure: "Road-Testing the New Self-Packing Luggage"

Smithsonian: "Exploring the Beaches of Antarctica"

Also, have a look at some other "faux" covers to see what else may be in store for us from the wonderful world of print. Then check out the cutes-y futuristic ads. I doubt they're the answer to circulation woes.

Postscript: Last time I looked, MSNBC.com was still using words -- mostly AP's and Reuters's, when not tapping into The Washington Post's and Newsweek's or Forbes's and Businessweek's. To believe Jon Friedman's puff piece, however, you'd think not. You'd think MSNBC.com had re-invented journalism "by using resources other than mere words and still photos." The site has been pushing that PR line for years. Friedman is just sucker enough to fall for it. The top editor tells him, "We have a lot of tools in our toolbox for telling a story." But reporters and original reporting -- what real journalism is all about -- don't count for much in that toolbox, since MSNBC.com is mainly a glorified content aggregator. Friedman has nothing to say about that except some hooey on being "liberated from old-fashioned journalism's usual limitations."

Post-postscript: A photo is worth at least several thousand words, says Leon ("He's Our Calvin Trillin") Freilich:

CHEZ MSNBC

Words
Are for the birds.
Photos
Are graphic grab-alls that tell a story with enough color, shading, design, depth of field and harmony, all achieved on the cheap, to mesmerize, both within and without Kansas, discerning canine buddies of Toto's.

Post-post-postscript: A reader sends this message as a memo to the MSNBC.com honchos:

Take it from the aggrieved remark of Oscar Hammerstein's wife: "Richard Rogers didn't write 'Some Enchanted Evening.' He wrote 'La la la la la la.' Nice, but not the same thing."
May 2, 2005 11:15 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
more picks

Sites to See

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CriticalMASS published on May 2, 2005 11:15 AM.

JUST BUSINESS was the previous entry in this blog.

PUFFERY OF THE CORPORATE CLASS is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.