THE FUTURE MEDIA LANDSCAPE: View from the NY Times Public Editor

What has become of journalism in the last 20 years causes many veterans of the news industry to lament - but it causes Margaret Sullivan to think.  The public editor of The New York Times was recently forced to distill her views on the subject to an especially important audience: young people just starting out in the field. 

After noting (as an NYU professor has observed) that we are living through the most monumental communications change since the invention of the printing press, Margaret Sullivan told her audience that "no one can say what the landscape will be, even five years from now."  But she does identify several trends worth tracking - and perhaps more importantly, a few certainties to hang your hat on.    Courtesy The New York Times. 

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ED SULLIVAN: A broadcasting icon, in spite of himself

“I've tried every way I know to smile into a camera,” he once confessed, “but I can't do it.”  How did he score triple the ratings of Oprah? 

Media commentary by Steve Dunlop

Almost all of us, whether we realize it or not, have the innate skill to pull off a TV appearance.  Not all of us have the talent to host an entire show.  But even there, a canny personality who recognizes his limits can, with hard work and a bit of luck, become a first-rate broadcaster.  Just look at Ed Sullivan.

Ed Sullivan, center, with four young men from Liverpool, England. February 1964. Original image at time.com.

No figure analogous to Sullivan exists today.  He was more than a TV host.  He was a cultural arbiter.  In his heyday, roughly one out of every eight Americans – that’s 12 percent of all people, not just households - watched The Ed Sullivan Show on a typical Sunday night.  Far more tuned in on special occasions, like the 1956 national debut of Elvis Presley, or the Beatles’ historic appearance in 1964.

Comparing the success of weekly versus daily programs can be tricky - but hour for hour, Sullivan’s average Nielsen ratings in his prime years were roughly triple those of Oprah Winfrey in hers.

Granted, The Ed Sullivan Show did have the advantage of being in prime time, and being first on the scene.  When his broadcast, originally known as “Toast of the Town,” went on the air on June 20, 1948, television was still an electronic desert. 

Celebrities regarded the new medium as a demotion.  TV’s paltry audiences were deemed to be beneath the dignity of the biggest stars.  And the small screens, fuzzy images, harsh lights and pasty makeup were simply no match for the movies.  

CBS decided that Sullivan, who was already one of its radio commentators as well as one of New York’s two leading Broadway gossip columnists (Walter Winchell was the other), was just the man to turn that around. 

Sullivan moved with ease in the smoke-filled, bourbon-drenched barrooms of Manhattan café society.  He trolled for news from a regular table at the storied El Morocco nightclub, where the Citicorp Building stands now.  (His rival Winchell held court at the Stork Club, just a few blocks away.)  

Since he was already in a position to control what was written about them, persuading celebrity guests to appear on this new thing called television was probably one of the easiest jobs Sullivan ever had.  But there was one thing that did not come easy.  That thing was Ed Sullivan himself.  

Sullivan with Topo Gigio, the "little Italian Mouse," a character that was a regular on the program in the 1960's.

Videos of Sullivan show a man stiff and self-conscious on live television.  He routinely missed his stop-mark when walking onstage.  His delivery was halting.  Some viewers thought he looked drunk.  The tension produced famous mispronunciations, most notably that “tonight we have a really big shoe" (instead of show). 

“His smile,” wrote Time Magazine in 1955, “is that of a man sucking a lemon.”  No wonder he acquired the nickname Old Stone Face.  

“I've tried every way I know to smile into a camera,” he once confessed, “but I can't do it.”

That inability clearly bothered Sullivan, despite his success.  The "Stone Face" moniker alone would have been enough to send a lesser man scurrying back to the newspapers.  

But it didn’t.  In fact, it may even have been liberating.  

While Milton Berle rattled off one liners on NBC and endured pies in the face while dressed in drag, Sullivan settled on a vastly different approach - tailor made for a career theater reporter.  It played not to his lemony smile, but to the size of his Rolodex - or what we would call today his “contacts database.”  

The Sullivan show enthusiastically embraced the breadth of the entertainment universe he inhabited.  A typical Sunday night might feature a big name singer, a Catskill comedian, a puppeteer, a European ballet troupe, a vaudeville piano player, a magician or juggler, a big band or folk singer, or a number or two from a hit musical.  

Today’s TV programs focus largely on one or two demographics, leaving others at the curb.  Sullivan’s success hinged on something more noble.  Whatever your interest or age, he had an act for you.  Generational tastes were cross-pollinated, even challenged, in a way that no longer happens. 

In that era, it clicked.  There was only one screen in the house.  And instead of drifting off to their own interests on Sunday nights, families actually gathered around that screen after dinner.  They watched Ed Sullivan, and were comfortably taken out of their comfort zone.

It is ironic that some of the cultural forces Sullivan helped unleash proved harbingers of his own demise.  The events of the 1960’s, and evolving technology, were making his job obsolete.  CBS cancelled The Ed Sullivan Show in 1971.  He died a few years later. 

An Ed Sullivan operating in today’s media environment would soon find his eclectic program sliced and diced to accommodate this target demographic or that.  His big tent approach would be focus-grouped to death.  (They’d even send in a media trainer to address his awkwardness.)  But that very awkwardness, and his ability to confront and even joke about it, as he did in this brief clip with Jerry Lewis, was precisely what endeared him to many millions.  

"His 'act' was no act at all," wrote TV producer Marlo Lewis.  "And the American people found that beguiling." 

FOR FURTHER READING:  "Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!  Ed Sullivan's America," by Gerald Nachman.   University of California Press, 2010. 

AN ARGUMENT FOR SNAIL MAIL

In our tweeting, emailing culture, the humble snail mail letter may be undergoing a slow, slow reappraisal.  And at least one PR veteran believes it's about time.

 "I have counseled younger people to adopt this old-school technique as they build their own careers," writes Don Spetner.  "I want them to understand the magic of a personal letter, the gravitas that the heft of paper and letterhead can lend to a message. It becomes more than a note; it's something that can be saved. And you never know when that might matter."  Courtesy PRWeek. 

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YOUR MOOC IS TELEVISION

Media commentary by Steve Dunlop

It’s been a little more than a year since the higher education community began to appreciate the huge potential of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).  Suddenly, those forward-looking musings are reading more like stale science fiction. 

As someone who has spent many years reporting TV news on the street - and teaching about it in both the classroom and the boardroom - I wonder when it will dawn on educators that the staggering dropout rate for online courses has nothing to do with the concept, and everything to do with the execution?

"MOOCow," based on "La Vaca de los Sinvaca" by Jose Bogado.  Courtesy iberry.com. 

In the wired world, the students have been handing out the grades - and they have been giving MOOCs, and their professors, an F.  One study reports that the average completion rate for MOOCs is just 6.8 percent.   That translates to a 93 percent dropout rate.  

What’s more, one of the MOOC’s biggest mavens is now running, not walking, in the opposite direction.  Sebastian Thrun, the founder of leading MOOC distributor Udacity, says his firm has “a lousy product,” and that he will reposition the company to focus on short courses aimed at professional development. 

Please, Mr. Thrun. Not so fast.  Before you tow your car to the information junkyard, let's at least look under the hood.  

A central truth about the nature of MOOC's appears to have been lost on the vast majority of their creators.   It is simply this: that MOOCs, at their essential core, are television.  

Do not confuse the attributes with the essence - or the accidents with the substance, as Aristotle might say.  A MOOC might have elements of Web-like interactivity.  It might be watched in small snippets, instead of in hour-long chunks.  And you will probably experience it on your iPad instead of in your living room.  Delivery methods have changed and will change, but they have nothing to do with the core of the experience.  

MOOCs, at bottom, are people, pictures, and ideas on a screen.   They are television.  

Grasp this basic truth - then survey the quality of the MOOCs that are out there.   Is it any wonder that the substandard programming has led 93 percent of the audience to tune out  before it’s over?  

As a coach who has helped thousands of individuals to communicate more effectively in the visual medium, let me offer a few relevant takeaways from the MOOCs we've audited, as well as from the brave and open-minded professors we have counseled: 

-  MOOC's need to tell stories.    "A growing body of cognitive research," wrote Chrystia Freeland in these pages in 2010, "is demonstrating something schoolteachers and entertainers have known for a long time: Most of us respond better to personal stories than to impersonal numbers and ideas." Television figured out a long time ago that the medium at its best when it tells stories.  That means setting up your courses with a strong narrative arc from beginning to end.  

-  Don't reinvent the wheel.  Observe the storytelling techniques on successful TV programs, and don't be afraid to emulate them.  Set up characters.  Identify problems.  Create suspense.  On the other hand, the majority of MOOCs we've encountered are set up like textbooks, which usually convey information without a strong story line.  When your students retain more about the last 10 episodes of "Mad Men" than about the last installment of your MOOC, you have a problem.  

-  Presenters must loosen up.   A large number of professors online come across as dweebish and boring.  That may be acceptable - barely - with a captive audience in a lecture hall.  It is lethal for your prospects on television.  Presenters should lose the pocket protector mindset and learn how to relate to the camera, which is the principal conduit to the unseen audience.   And that involves much more than looking at the lens.  

-  Break out of the visual jail.   Too many MOOC presenters get lazy when it comes to the visual element.  Some resort repeatedly, for instance, to handwritten notes captured by a virtual pen application.  It's about as exciting as watching paint dry.  Think creatively about visuals that could enhance your lecture - many of them are available at little or no cost in places like Wikimedia Commons.   Ken Burns could make the Civil War come to life with creative use of tintypes, because he understood how to use them.  You can too.

"This instrument," Edward R. Murrow said of television in 1958, "can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire.  But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends."   MOOCs are television - there is no avoiding that truth.  If educators are truly determined to make the world their classroom, they have to learn how to adapt to the medium - and not expect the medium to adapt to them. 

SOCIAL MEDIA: A disaster worth avoiding

In February, we'll be celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Facebook.  Celebrating, you say?   Well, whether or not you haul out the Dom Perignon, it's time to take stock.

Less than a decade and a half into the new millennium, we have already witnessed the birth of some game-changing social phenomena.  Consider these common terms that would have made little or no sense in 2000:  "We're on Orange alert."  "What a cool tweet."   "I'm defriending you."  

But perhaps the most confounding trend in our wired age is the emerging insistence by public figures on destroying themselves - in 140 characters or less.   "As someone who covers politics," writes a columnist for the Santa Fe New Mexican, "I implore politicians from the local to the national levels to keep tweeting and Facebooking to your hearts’ content... you’re making my job easier."

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