A spectre is haunting my brain - the spectre of Columnism. All the powers of good writing have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: tweets and theory, short stories and discourse, French New Wave Cinema and German Expressionism.
As I wrote Monday's piece on uncomfortable toothbrushes and ecological optimism dark thoughts entered my mind. Shivers crept through the limbs as fingers froze in horror. "Am I just writing like a salarised columnist?" Making a minor observation about something during the day and padding the word count until it meets an editor's requirements. In the world of blogging it's an act that died with the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. If you're a salaried employee in print media it pays enough that you can own an inner-Sydney house.
I first began formal academic media studies in the first class for my university's first year of a media faculty's existence. It was at a time when rapid changes in both socioeconomic circles and content production itself were looming. There was the energy of professors flailing about trying to work out what they were even looking at themselves; let alone what to teach.
One lecture that first year involved Buffy x Spike AMVs.
There was at least one professor of journalism in the program at the time and journalism was frequently a point of study but it was always viewed from an outsider's perspective. See, this was around when Web 2.0 was entering common speech as an understanding of how the internet was changing things. Basically, print and broadcast media produce content and information that is then distributed and consumed by recipients. There's usually a capitalist transaction to acquire the information from the broadcaster but there's no interaction or byplay with the creator. It's a one-way communication.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, material restrictions on this one-way communication were developed. The cost to send a message in a newspaper increased and transformed into advertising fees. Increasingly large scale distribution goals for media companies made public access harder. The days of the local trade unionist and communist newspapers were able to be stamped out by the growing monopolisation of major corporations. By the 1980s, to write and work for a news organisation was to become a divine prophet, descending from Mt. Sinai bearing tablets of wisdom and commandments.
From the dawn of message boards, forums and blog comment boxes, the internet changed this relationship. The producer of a text can be immediately responded to. Serious pieces written by amateurs in response can be sent with a few clicks. Parodies and subversions of the text are easy to make. A reader can just call the author of a post a dickhead.
Columnists aren't journalists. Their purpose isn't to report on incidents to provide historical documenation. They do not exist to inform the public of true events. They certainly aren't hired to speak truth to power. Columns are pure rhetoric and idelogy. They're to add further credibility to an editor's political goals. More than anyone else in a media organisation they are the prophets.
Columnists think of themselves as journalists. My idealistic description of that profession in the previous paragraph is something a columnist projects onto themself. After all, they work in the same building and have the same editors. They contribute to the holy tablets distributed to the masses. Are they not also a fuckin' newsman and if you tell 'em otherwise they'll punch you in the face?
There is a website called Twitter Dot Com. It's an imageboard in the vein of websites such as Futaba Channel or 4chan Dot Org where up to four images can be attached to any post. It's free to use and accounts are easy to make. Unlike those other imageboards I mentioned, a user account with a displayed name must be used. If a user is a person of professional note, the site's administrators can attach a blue tick to the username to prove they are who they say they are.
Twitter is not where important events in the world occur. Those happen on Facebook Dot Com. However, Facebook has a terrible user interface. It continually hides events as they happen. Communities are continually splintering into more and more tiny insular message boards. Finding the news takes effort. It's mostly used by aging people.
Twitter sings a sweet siren song to workers in the media. It promises immediate access to news as it happens. It delivers audiences that can respond, giving instant feedback for any story that breaks. Its intoxicating perfume lures People of Print into bright petals only to reveal it was a rafflesia the whole time.
For a regular journalist, Twitter reveals that they were never arbiters of truth. That their systems of distributing information are highly vulnerable to be calling called a cunt. For a columnist, a terrifying cycle of parasitism is born. The shallow drivel of a piece like this cannot survive for long. It will be mocked and parodies as your credibility is derided for the fraud you are. But to stop posting would also mean to not gain a renewable resource: columns about your previous column's discourse. Posts about Posts.
I always feel a fear when writing non-fiction. It's different to my fear of writing fiction (a fear that I suck). I fear that I will misinform people. Worse: I fear that I will write something as shallow as a columnist.
I'm not even paid for this junk.
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