DEMOCRATIZING MADISON AVE.
The Daily Bulletin today had an article by Will Bigham about Claremonter Jared Cicon, who has a knack for creating amateur TV ads. Cicon, according to the article, was a finalist in a Doritos contest that aired the two top ads during the Super Bowl earlier this year. Cicon didn't win, but he did get $10,000 as a runner-up.
Cicon didn't stop there. Now he's out to win the $57,000 prize in a Heinz ketchup contest. Cicon has made the final 16, and the winning ad will air in September during the FOX network's Emmy Award telecast.
Bigham's article indicates that these sort of amateur ad contest seem to be becoming more popular and that the ad agencies that once scoffed at the contests are now seeing them as marketing opportunities.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM?
Speaking of amateurs, KPCC 89.3FM, the Pasadena public radio station, yesterday aired a show about the relationship of blogging and journalism.
Guest host John Beaupre, filling in on Patt Morrison's afternoon show, moderated a discussion between authors Andrew Keen (The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture) and Scott Gant (We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age).
Here's the show's description:
World Wide Web 2.0: Power to the People or Misinformation Superhighway?
These days it seems as if anyone with a computer can be an expert on anything. Think personal blogs, YouTube debates, literature reviews on Amazon.com, and CNN posting viewer submitted videos and photos. The internet has blurred the lines between amateur and authority, journalist and citizen, and is revolutionizing American media and entertainment at a rapid pace. But does today's self-broadcasting culture make for a more informed and involved public or have we simply compromised our professional standards?
(Click here to listen to the show.)
Keen, in our view, comes off as something of a cultural snob. He argues that the reading public has become "less literate" and needs professional, "media literate" journalists to present information for consumption.
Gant allows that much of the Internet is junk but thinks that readers have a certain responsibility to become media literate and to learn how to discern between legitimate information and fluff or propaganda.
This whole debate seems to create a false choice: blogging or journalism, pick one. As we've written recently, we think the two are different things, and that there is a place for both in the world. Further, do journalists really want to be put in the place of censoring bloggers, of saying what voices can be aired?
This debate promises to continue as we struggle with the place of new technology and new means of communication in our culture. We suspect the debate is an old one. Cultural gatekeepers in the 15th century surely saw the printing press as the next sign of the Apocalypse and must have argued that monks creating handmade, illuminated manuscripts was the only true way to disseminate knowledge. One thing is certain, new technologies are difficult to keep bottled up.
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