Can Star Trek save journalism? Maybe — if we write enough stories about Star Trek
May 10, 2009 at 11:33 am by David Warner
Frank Gorshin in a 1969 "Star Trek" episode referenced by Dave Itzkoff.
In more proof that the blockbuster Star Trek movie has tapped into the zeitgeist, or at least the hype-geist, the Week in Review section in today’s New York Times includes three count ‘em three Trek-inspired stories. Surprisingly, only two out of three use the now-obligatory Obama-as-Spock trope.
• Columbia J-School prof and pop historian David Hajdu on Star Trek as “an early manifestation of our contemporary absorption with the pop culture of the past.”
• Dave Itzkoff’s “Ideas & Trends” piece on the socio/political climate of 1966 (when the TV series debuted) vs. that of 2009
• Maureen Dowd’s dream that Spock/Obama swoosh in and use the powers of logic to save newspapers. (I especially liked the ‘red matter’/'read matter’ pun, though it may work better if you’ve seen the movie.)
Dowd’s piece neatly combines Trek-speak with journalists’ other favorite topic these days, the death of journalism. That theme gets its due elsewhere in the Sunday Times with Frank Rich’s “The American Press on Suicide Watch” and Clark Hoyt’s ombudsman column, The Public Editor, which faults the Times for missing the dying-newspaper story on its corporate doorstep: the labor dispute that threatens the extinction of the Times-owned Boston Globe. Guess the death-of-journalism coverage gets a little trickier when your own newspaper is dismembering another.
May 10th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Interesting quote from the Frank Rich NYT piece:
“It’s all a matter of priorities. Not long ago, we laughed at the idea of pay TV. Free television was considered an inalienable American right (as long as it was paid for by advertisers). Then cable and satellite became the national standard.”
Cable and satellite are the standard for several reasons
1) Variety – I get a heck of a lot of options for the $$ I pay to Bright House.
2) Niche – Yes, there are cable stations able to survive because they are targeted to very, very specific people.
3) Quality – Cable signals are simply a higher quality than anything via Broadcast. Digitial might change that, but I don’t need rabbit ears or an antenna to watch cable.
Each network suffered because of cable and satellite… so that means every individual newspaper will suffer. To survive, newspapers will have to start specializing: don’t be everything to everyone. Find a niche and dominate that niche.
Then not only will online advertising be more profitable, but people might actually pay something for it.