History by Magazine -- Seeing our future from 1993
Prescience? Rolling Stone likes the rise of the young 'Butthead Generation' making journalism less dull and George Gilder sees newspapers of the future being delivered digitally over optic cables.
My weekly take on America's news, culture and ideas -- from exactly 30 years ago. From 1989 to 2007, during the last Golden Age of print, I wrote a weekly newspaper column about what I found interesting, provocative or ideologically subversive in the incredibly diverse and powerful world of magazines. This one appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 30 years ago this week.
In defense of the Butt-head generation
Nov. 11, 1993
The young are abandoning conventional journalism in stunning and accelerating numbers."
That statement by Rolling Stone media critic Jon Katz in "The Media's War on Kids" is grim old news to those who own and operate newspapers, news weeklies and the commercial TV networks.
But Katz says that it's no accident that so many young people tune-out venerable mainstream media and instead tune-in to upstart alternatives, such as the weekly entertainment paper In Pittsburgh or MTV.
Rock, rap, computers, video games and cable — young people now create, control and love these new multimedia choices. Which is why our pop culture is dominated by the likes of Snoop Doggy Dogg and Beavis and Butt-head and not Perry Como and Mr. Magoo.
Meanwhile, Katz says, the traditional sources of journalism have badly missed the boat when it comes to kid culture. They've not merely ignored and alienated younger consumers by resisting changes in the way they present news or their definition of what news is.
More important, they've trashed youth culture at every opportunity for either being repulsive or dangerous to civilization.
Youth-bashing is a trend as old as Socrates. But Katz, who's extra tough on the academic, corporate and editorial old fogies and school marms who dominate journalism, says it should be obvious to more pundits than just Kurt Andersen of Time magazine that "the essence of youth culture is to be distinct from, even repulsive to, the old. Otherwise, what's the point?"
Katz's attack on traditional journalism is unrelenting it's an institution that's hypocritical, out of touch, lazy, boring and takes itself far too seriously. Much of what he charges is true, but old journalism couldn't possibly be as monolithically myopic or youth-trashing as he makes it out to be.
Katz's argument is provocative and, despite his failings, much of it rings true. But he'd make a better case if he were willing to admit the truth that many aspects of the youth culture he celebrates are objectively repulsive, stupid and not very entertaining, no matter how much they annoy aging Baby Boomers and their terrified parents.
P.S. Maybe Time magazine is becoming more in-hip with the Youth Culture than anyone realizes, including Katz.
In his review of "Live From Hell," a newly released and perfectly titled comedy album by the late Sam Kinison, house entertainment critic Richard Corliss is awfully kind to America's former Satan of Bad Taste and Political Incorrectness.
Incredibly, Corliss — risking his future as a trusted adult cultural critic but weakening Katz's arguments — brings himself to admit, albeit grudgingly and apologetically, that "sometimes" Kinison "is funny." He's also safely dead.
Newspapers may have severe demographic problems, but ASAP, Forbes' quarterly magazine that exists to explain new information technologies to business executives, offers newspaper owners some much-appreciated hope for the future.
The good news comes courtesy of future-media guru George Gilder.
A regular contributor to the tech magazine ASAP, he wrote "Microcosm" and is in the process of writing "Telecosm," a book that promises that advancing technology and cheaper computer power will make everyone's future freer, cheaper and better.
In "Digital Darkhouse — Newspapers," Gilder says that newspapers — and not TVs, as many think — are perfect complements to the computer because they are uniquely personalized media that let their readers "choose, peruse, sort, queque and quaff the news and advertising copy at their own pace and volition."
He says "News today is collected, edited and laid out digitally. In fact, newspapers and computers are converging, while computers and televisions still represent radically different modes. It is the newspaper, therefore, not the TV, that is best suited for the computer age."
The paper of the future, Gilder explains, will be delivered electronically via fiber optic cables and be displayed on flat, one-pound digital newspanels that will be connected to data banks all over the world.
It'll look just like a page from a newspaper, and it'll even have ads. The only problem will be teaching all the old folks how to turn to the obituary page. ".