{"id":35,"date":"2007-11-15T13:29:18","date_gmt":"2007-11-15T13:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp\/2007\/11\/rethinking_mass_culture\/"},"modified":"2007-11-15T13:29:18","modified_gmt":"2007-11-15T13:29:18","slug":"rethinking_mass_culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2007\/11\/rethinking_mass_culture.html","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking Mass Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re consumed by the idea of mass culture. Since television (and before it, radio) brought the immediacy of produced culture into our living rooms, we’ve treated the power of a massive aggregated audience with awe. That something is popular enough to attain common currency means it has power. Mass culture pervades everything. Writers place a character or location by dropping pop culture references. Advertisers trade on the familiarity of mass culture icons to sell us things. The so-called “traditional arts” try to justify their contemporary relevance in relationship to the “mass” taste.
\nOur base definition of success is the mass culture definition. If something finds a mass audience then it is successful. Mass culture is expected to make money, even obscene amounts of money. Success is defined not by achievement of excellence but by the size of audience and how much money that audience makes for you.
\nI’m not, by the way, dumping on mass culture. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it isn’t excellent, and I’m an enthusiastic consumer of mass culture myself. This isn’t another high\/low culture debate. Not at all.
\nBut I do think that some of the assumptions we make about the intrinsic power of mass culture no longer hold true. Much has been written about pop culture breaking down into niches. But even as we acknowledge the fragmenting of audience, we have been reluctant to re-examine our assumptions about the power of mass culture and how it works. The very strategies that make something successful in a mass culture model may work against that success in a niche market model.
\nTo take newspapers as an example: If the average reading level is eighth grade, in a mass-culture model you want to write to that level and hope you capture the largest demographic segment. And you hope that those below the level will give you a chance. In fact, you aggressively court this group by trying to prove your accessibility. As for the group reading above the level: your strategy for success is “where else are they going to go?” Your paper is probably the only\/best\/major source of news in your community.
\nNewspapers have not traditionally been mass market. In fact they were the classic niche subsidy model. The genius of newspapers was that they aggregated lots of mini-content – comics, bridge columns, stock tables, crossword puzzles, the arts, business, sports – and built enough of a combined audience to subsidize the content that otherwise would not have paid for itself.
\nI don’t know a single journalist who got in the business because they wanted to make sure Garfield or Dear Abby got delivered every day, but the fact is that the content that journalists think counts most – coverage of city hall, foreign reporting, investigations – does not have a big enough audience to pay for itself on its own.
\nYet somewhere along the way, this idea of niche aggregation slipped away from the local paper and was replaced by the sense that every story ought to be comprehensible by every reader. The problem: in a culture that increasingly offers more and more choice and allows people to get more precisely what they want, when they want, and how they want it, a generalized product that doesn’t specifically satisfy anyone finds its audience erode away. The more general, the more broad, the more “mass culture” a newspaper tries to become, the faster its readers look elsewhere.
\nThe very things you see newspapers doing to try to bring in new readers – Britney Spears on the cover, pandering to pop culture trends, sensationalist news stories that offer more heat than light – are the things that while they might have worked 20 years ago, don’t today. That’s because the celebutantes get better dish at TMZ and the Live at 5 guys do better fire and missing kids.
\nOn websites, the celeb stuff gets more traffic, true, but these are “drive-by” clicks that don’t build a readership. Not that there shouldn’t be celebs in a newspaper, but they’re not the solution to building a bigger audience.
\nTomorrow:<\/strong> Just how big is that audience for celebrities?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re consumed by the idea of mass culture. Since television (and before it, radio) brought the immediacy of produced culture into our living rooms, we’ve treated the power of a massive aggregated audience with awe. That something is popular enough to attain common currency means it has power. Mass culture pervades everything. Writers place a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-35","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ePZm-z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":48,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2007\/11\/a_low_pressure_air_mass.html","url_meta":{"origin":35,"position":0},"title":"A Low Pressure Air Mass…","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"November 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"If the power of mass culture is based on the ability to attract a mass audience, then perhaps it's worth looking at the size of the mass. Magazines: People magazine is solidly mass market. In 2006 it had a circulation of 3.8 million. Its rivals Us Weekly sold 1.8 million\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":619,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2015\/11\/mass-market-versus-arts.html","url_meta":{"origin":35,"position":1},"title":"The Mass Market Ain’t What It Used To Be (And What That Means For The Arts)","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"November 30, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"What does it mean to \"engage with an audience\"? It's a fundamental question for anyone who makes anything. Whether it's a political party trying to win votes, Coke trying to sell drinks, an entrepreneur trying to sell an idea, or a theatre trying to sell tickets. Whole industries thrive on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "audience"","block_context":{"text":"audience","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/audience"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/1chogfans_t598.jpg?fit=598%2C398&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/1chogfans_t598.jpg?fit=598%2C398&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/1chogfans_t598.jpg?fit=598%2C398&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":85,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/04\/caught_in_the_middle_-_who_are.html","url_meta":{"origin":35,"position":2},"title":"Caught In The Middle – Who Are The New Arts Gatekeepers?","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"April 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Much of the big shift in our culture right now is a re-ordering of power. For the past 50 years, mass culture, fueled by TV, has been a dominant power. When success is measured in millions of eyeballs (or ears), quality is a secondary commodity. Mass culture has permeated the\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/04\/caught_in_the_middle_-_who_are.html#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"middlemancomic.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/middlemancomic.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2006\/06\/diacritical.html","url_meta":{"origin":35,"position":3},"title":"…diacritical","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"June 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Over the past 60 years the idea of mass culture has taken on a life of its own; this idea that mainstream culture, mainstream media, is so powerful, so pervasive, that it touches every aspect of our lives. Indeed, it's difficult to escape... mass culture - it's everywhere, and leaks\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "about"","block_context":{"text":"about","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":47,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2007\/11\/the_rise_of_arts_culture.html","url_meta":{"origin":35,"position":4},"title":"The Rise Of Arts Culture","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"November 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I want to make an argument about the rise of arts culture. In the 1950s, at the dawn of TV, the medium's pioneers believed that television would be the great democratizer - exposing culture to the masses. 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