Print Advertisements (et l'histoire d'un petit journal)

Still reading Lester.

In regard to print advertising he writes, "Small newspapers with their tighter budgets are more susceptible to advertising pressures than are large-circulation newspapers...Although journalists seldom like to admit it, there is evidence of correlation between advertisers and editorial choices."

Please allow me a war story and some reflections.

In the spring of 2004 Playboy came to Clemson's campus. Before their arrival, the publication contracted with a national advertising firm, 360 Youth, to run a full-page color advertisement in Clemson's student-run publication, The Tiger.

Upon learning of the advertisement, The Tiger editorial staff pulled the ad copy. Sure, come to town, but you're not using this publication to make our students look foolish. It wasn't about being prudish; it was about preserving the publication's reputation. It was about standing up to corporate pressures to preserve editorial integrity.

Similarly, a week prior, The Tiger decided to relinquish the student activity fee that previously provided approximately $30,000 of its $150,000 budget. It was the first time in 97 years that the publication relied solely on its own generation of revenue. The paper is currently in its third year of financial independence.

I believe The Tiger's story is not unique.

Media consolidation, the acquisition of smaller media by larger corporate media and the creating of monstrous media conglomerates, makes decisions like this one more difficult. Their advertisers can afford to be much more persuasive. The large companies' responsibilities are much greater. As in the case of Knight Ridder, even once untouchable giants risk death (and rebirth?) through consolidation.

Or, as Adbusters put it. "Small is the new big." (Think zines here)

Small, niche publications can afford, because they are small, to maintain integrity. It takes less to keep them going and their clients are, in some senses, easier to replace.

It's about the study of media ecology.

From the Media Ecology Association site, "It is the study of media environments, the idea that technology and techniques, modes of information and codes of communication play a leading role in human affairs."

When we synthesize media ecology with Jameson's non-synchronous modes of production, it is possible to see that Lester has keenly observed (and maybe incorrectly labeled) the "visible antagon[ism]" between competing modes.

Maybe the digital age, which some fear will kill print, has allowed us to better recognize this competition between communicative modes and the ways in which these modes "play a leading role in human affairs" (our stage?).

Media scholar czar Marshall McLuhan used to tell the story (originally Aristotle's from On the Soul) of the fish who would not have known she was surrounded by water.

Maybe.

Or maybe it takes a waterfall, a rush of powerful moving water which surrounds the fish, before she realizes the water's presence.

KTF.