As I’ve said before in blogging class, we rarely get the media we want or deserve.
Blogging is, in part, a response to the fragmentation of our society and an atmosphere in which there are few exemplars of the journalistic craft around which we can rally collectively.
But I am a print junkie still.
I like the feel of newsprint in my fingers. I like the experience of stumbling upon content that doesn’t fit exactly with my worldview, and I like watching the dance of content creation that goes on in the editorial cycle of the print newsroom.
Print products dying? Well, some of them, yes. (Is not a cruel irony that Gourmet is being revived as an app? That’s like LIFE being revived as a Twitpic!).
But the cruel reality of the national magazine industry hasn’t stopped enterprising local people like Salem’s Randy Hill from jumping into the fray.
Perhaps you have seen Mr. Hill’s new baby, Willamette Valley Life, around town. I first saw one about half a year ago at China Faith Restaurant (incidentally, my Korean friend Esther’s favorite Chinese place in Salem), but have run across it increasingly in my daily routine as distribution has gotten more defined.
WVL is looking for writers to create engaging seasonal lifestyle content about the valley, so if you’re like me, and you pride yourself on knowing what’s happening before it happens, give Mr. Hill a shout, info@willamettevalleylife.com.
As a mama who’s stuck at home a lot I’m excited about the prospect of having a regional print product that I can read digitally in the form that it appears in newsprint. It may not be paper in my fingertips, but I’m learning more and more as I engage with digital products that it is the format I respond to…
It’s a pretty ambitious project that WVL has taken on (check out that distribution map!) but I’ll be excited to see how it develops. The editorial has been improving already, as has the advertising based (I see Salem’s DeWolky shoe shop has come on board).
Good luck to them!
In other pressing media questions, just what is that distribution map telling us? Is it a green giant thumbing its nose at the coast? A verdant federalist sniffing at Astoria?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Emily, Rachael Rossman. Rachael Rossman said: RT @emilygrosvenor: A call to writers and media producers in the Willamette Valley. Here's a new media face. http://bit.ly/bYTcY8 [...]
Well, perhaps no age gets the media they deserve! In the Sunday Times Robert Pinsky reviews a book about the wild, wild west of incunabula:
Damn, this transition sounds familliar!
I really hate these not-recognized-in-their-times narratives of our greatest innovators — but perhaps it is too much for me to expect us to ever understand what is happening while it is happening. That’s a pleasure left for the examined life, right?
I’m a big Pinsky fan, mostly for his WP column and the effort he took to launch the favorite poem project. http://www.favoritepoem.org/
As for never getting the media we deserve, I believe I deserve good books, and I find them again and again after much searching. Books are media too, yes, and they are just as much created for the marketplace as movies and music, but I still relish the idea of one person telling a story to one person who reads it in quietude, sinking completely into that book’s world and that author’s mind. I’m not sure I’m ready for interactive books, but they’re coming!
Local media is really tough to make compelling and to do with any level of consistency. The best local media I’ve consumed recently was Miriam Gershow’s The Local News.
Guess what? It’s a novel.
http://miriamgershow.com/the_local_news.html
I’ve read Randy’s paper — it’s a nice little publication! I would love to see it grow, and to see him get more contributors. Seems like he must be working so hard these days!
Randy is cool, he’s also in a band with my dad. Nice fellows (and frontwoman), those Oregon Valley Boys.