In 1996 I wrote a review of the then-new Pointcast, calling it CNN on Your Desktop. I thought it was a miracle. I was a contributing editor for HotWired, the first website of Wired Magazine, and at the time was a pretty influential place to write.
So my review ran in Wired, and later when I went to an InternetWorld trade show, there on the show floor, much to my surprise, was a huge two-story banner, above the Pointcast booth, with a quote from my review, and my name under it.
The most compelling app I've ever seen for a personal computer.
Apparently I had written the most glowing review of the product, and it had appeared in Wired, and it contained a solid pull quote, and all that made it a huge event.
The point of this little vignette is that I understand the rush that editorial people feel when their judgement makes or breaks something. When your attention is sought by entrepreneurs and PR people. You don't make very much money for this work, but at times you can have huge influence.
That is what has been slipping away from professional journalists year after year, and now it's almost gone. Publications that used to have large influence like Time and Newsweek are now shadows of their former selves. BusinessWeek is gone, swallowed up into the Bloomberg machine. Even the Internet-embracing TechCrunch feels like it's just going through the motions.
Facebook is hiring journalists, and like it or not, they're doing the same job for a tech company that they were doing for publishing companies. The resulting product is no more or less conflicted or valid. It's the same product, at a much larger scale.
In 1996 I got the rush, but I wasn't seeking it, I wasn't even expecting it. And I knew immediately that it wasn't mine, and it wouldn't last. If I had written that only as a blog post, they might have included it in a quote sheet, but they never would have put it in a banner. That belonged to Wired. My name was just going along for the ride. That was the one and only time a quote of mine got that kind of play.
But I think there's an even bigger rush available to journalists who stick with it. Electronic distribution of news now, 20 years after Pointcast, isn't really that much more developed. It has a long way to go. We need social networks of news makers, and imho neither Facebook or Twitter has done that yet. And that's just the next step. I think there are many after that.
Imagine you were a lover of movies in 1932. Sound had just been introduced. Movies were great. You could feel the potential. But there was still so much more to do! Gone With The Wind and Wizard of Oz wouldn't come until 1939. And there was The Godfather, and Spielberg and Scorcese, Meryl Streep and Al Pacino. Leonardo and Jennifer.
What's over then? The 20th century system of news, with powerful gatekeepers whose names are displayed above trade show booths in 2-story type. That's gone forever. But what comes next will give you bigger rushes than any of that. I know because in other contexts I've been privileged to participate in those kinds of developments. And I yearn for more to come.
If you love news I believe strongly there's never been a better time to be alive.
