We all know that the print journalism industry has hit hard times. We can actually see the Los Angeles Times has slimmed down and like a woman who’s gotten the lapband procedure, the drastic weight loss may leave one leaner but leaves behind unsightly stretch marks and little muscle.
Focus for a moment on the repercussions for entertainment journalism, something some people may not even see as real journalism because, for the most part, what most people see of it is the fluff. From the outside, industry journalism can look like “Entertainment Tonight,” with questions like “Who are you wearing and what’s your favorite color?” It’s hardly the hard-hitting questions one would hear from a professional journalist. You may cringe, as I did, while watching last-weekend’s E! coverage of the Golden Globes awards presentation, featuring Giuliana Ransic, as she conducted interview after awkward interview, prying into actor’s love lives or bonding with them over Spanx. This kind of journalism, and I use the term very loosely, isn’t going to go anywhere soon, people like it and consume it at an astonishing rate. And, more importantly, it makes money by selling ads.
The kind of reporting that may fly under the radar includes the reporters who cover the business of entertainment: the deals, the technology, ratings numbers, power struggles, home video wars and entertainment law are all part of the scrutiny. As with any other business, journalists serve as the watchdogs. And like Cerberus at the gates of hell, they may have a big bark and little bite, but they are an important part of the judgment process.
Due to the Internet, the price the consumer puts on information has been driven into the ground. I remember when a production office would have only one subscription to the trade magazines because they were so expensive. These publications were the only portal to serious information about the business. Perhaps that information was overpriced at the time. To provide an idea how much the value of information has fallen, my personal Variety subscription used to be in the high-hundreds of dollars (more than a thousand at the newsstand price) and I just renewed at $99 per year. So there’s something more than just market forces at work. My annual toilet paper expenditures are higher than that and I would hope that I would value information on at least an equal scale to that of bathroom tissue.
Because of the new expectation of free information, we’ve lessened the quality of the product and, in turn, we expect to pay less. The public simply doesn’t want to pay subscription fees and expects these publications to make up the revenue in advertising dollars.
Hollywood Reporter has gone from a daily to a weekly and usually features a magazine-style softball interview with a reality show production team. Los Angeles Times Calendar coverage is a far cry from what it used to be and now usually has features more suitable for People magazine than for a newspaper of record. The New York Times, three time zones away, has far better reporting on the industry than what we are getting on our home turf.
Deadline Hollywood, which went from online industry rumor mill to serious journalism, could be the model for the future of industry reporting and hopefully, competing sites will find a solid business model that will work. But unless they switch to a subscription-based concept, journalists will still be at the mercy of advertisers who can pull sponsorship and, resultantly, reporters may have to continue to subtlety push product rather than objectively report facts.
As our serious entertainment journalism merges more and more with the celebrity coverage, the studios, power players, agencies and other big entertainment business aren’t examined with the seriousness they warrant. Remember, these are job creators and taxpayers, just like any other business, and their standards and practices require oversight by the fourth estate. Of course, executives and filmmakers will agree to the interviews that refer them as “geniuses” and “visionaries” and it helps to sell their movies. Articles have simply become giant ads. It calls to mind newspaper magnate Lord Northcliffe, who once said, “News is something someone wants suppressed. Everything else is just advertising.”