The marketing geniuses hired by print publications to promote their
image as an important, lasting medium for advertisers long into the future
have come up with an age-old answer to the threat of extinction from the Web — tabloid
journalism. How creative!
Have a look at the stories featured on the fake Newsweek
cover, right, of March 21, 2095. Besides the cover story about California’s popularity as an island
off the North American continent 62 years after the Big Quake and “Clones in the Military: Don’t
Ask –Don’t Tell,” the story cover lines read as follows:
Politics: The New Demopublicans
Business: Weekends
Reinstated
Religion: Shanghai on just $50K a Day
Science: Cats Develop 10th
Life
Sports: Can Yanks Reverse 100 yr. Curse?
The science and sports cover lines really belong to the low-grade mentality of supermarket
tabs like News of the World. They long ago infected the newsweeklies with their peculiar fetish
for the occult. But c’mon. A-list advertisers don’t exactly go for News of the World and its ilk.
And by the way, can anyone enlighten me as to what religion has to do with Shanghai on $50k a
day? I have no idea.
Here are some other cover lines, according to the Magazine Publishers of America,
from “faux” covers of the future:
Parents:
“Pregnant at 75:
The Risks and Rewards”
Reader’s
Digest: “Androids
v. Clones: Where Do You Stand?”
Travel +
Leisure:
“Road-Testing the New Self-Packing Luggage”
Smithsonian: “Exploring the Beaches of
Also, have a look at some other “faux” covers to see what
else may be in store for us from the wonderful world of print. Then check out the cutes-y
futuristic ads. I doubt they’re the answer to circulation woes.
Postscript: Last time I looked, MSNBC.com was still using words — mostly AP’s
and Reuters’s, when not tapping into The Washington Post’s and Newsweek’s or Forbes’s and
Businessweek’s. To believe Jon Friedman’s
puff piece, however, you’d think not. You’d think MSNBC.com had
re-invented journalism “by using resources other than mere words and still photos.” The site has
been pushing that PR line for years. Friedman is just sucker enough to fall for it. The top editor
tells him, “We have a lot of tools in our toolbox for telling a story.” But reporters and original
reporting — what real journalism is all about — don’t count for much in that toolbox, since
MSNBC.com is mainly a glorified content aggregator. Friedman has nothing to say about that
except some hooey on being “liberated from old-fashioned journalism’s usual limitations.”
Post-postscript: A photo is worth at least several thousand words, says Leon (“He’s Our Calvin Trillin”)
Freilich:
CHEZ MSNBC
Words
Are
for the birds.
Photos
Are graphic grab-alls that tell a story with enough color, shading,
design, depth of field and harmony, all achieved on the cheap, to mesmerize, both within and
without Kansas, discerning canine buddies of Toto’s.
Post-post-postscript: A reader sends this message as a memo to the MSNBC.com
honchos:
Take it from the aggrieved remark of Oscar Hammerstein’s wife: “Richard
Rogers didn’t write ‘Some Enchanted Evening.’ He wrote ‘La la la la la la.’ Nice, but not the same
thing.”
