In 1999 I wrote an article about how the media feared the Internet. The angle was that they didn’t have a clue about how to approach the Internet and its possibilities. Not only because of the money factor; meaning that they saw no apparent business model in the Internet, but also because they simply couldn’t figure out what to use the Internet for.
We were young then, but we were also among the pioneers on the digital media scene – even though we were still journalism students. We quite simply saw the future of storytelling in the Internet.
It occured to us back then that printing technology had once made storytelling completely linear, which is not our natural way of telling stories. If you didn’t have to put your story into the template of a book, nobody would tell it in a linear fashion. Instead you would break it up and sidetrack from time to time to make a specific point and then come back to the main story.
Natural storytelling
Basically that is still how we tell stories when we don’t have to do it in writing. When you talk to your neighboor about the rebuilding of the local road and all the hazzles about it, you speak from the heart and break up your story into emotional bits and pieces that all come together as a collected impression of your opinion.
Or when you talk to a colleague about your problems with the kid’s school, you tell your story from the top of your mind; it’s not aided by a linear drama curve you learned in high school. Your colleague will probably ask questions, which will shape the story you are telling, and the storyline will turn into a matrix of information, emotional outbursts and opinions all serving the combined interests of you and your colleague.
Our conclusion was that the technology of the Internet was able to make storytelling natural again. It was able to take us back to how we told stories around the campfire. Broken into small pieces of what seemed most important to us right there at that moment in close interaction with our audience.
Better yet, on the Internet users would be able to experience their own individual version of the story since they only had themselves in front of the screen. The storyteller could set up a grid of endless possibilities for the user to experience and as such make the story completely immersive. Assisted by the Internet’s natural interaction between users the possibilities of storytelling were, well, astounding.
Visionary and naiive
So we decided to build a storytelling concept for this new paradigm of storytelling and turn it into media reality as the visionary journalist students we were. We wanted to bring this rennaisance of storytelling to every newsdesk in the country.
We were, of course, naiive. The media industry had no intention of embracing anything new that was a possible threat to their current business model. Why spend thousands of dollars on creating an interactive documentary only to put it on the Internet where everyone could watch it for free? Much better to copy-paste existing content they had already made their money on and let it serve as an Internet based calling card for the real newspaper.
We tried to convince them that they should invest in the future, and that new business models would emerge in the tailwinds of the dot-com-frenzy at the time. They told us that they wanted to see it first, and it was at that moment it occured to us that they didn’t have a clue about what to do about the Internet. They didn’t even have a basic curiousity about it. They were just fearful. They saw the Internet as a huge threat, and they could only manage to dig a hole for themselves. It was a completely defensive attitude.
Fear and money
We were flabbergasted and couldn’t believe it. They were journalists for God’s sake! What happened to research and checking things out by experience? Where was the entrepreneurial spirit of the visionary journalists that had founded all these newspapers decades ago? There was none of that.
That’s when I wrote the article. We made it part of a school assignment to call selected media companies and ask them about their Internet strategy. Only one media had one and guess what; it was actually making money on it. The rest of the media industry were on their heels when it came to the Internet and many didn’t even have a website.
This was 1999 before iPods, Youtube, Google and social media. Even Flash was new back then and only just becoming the chosen technology of multimedia storytelling. Bandwidth was way too slow for video because the streaming technology just wasn’t good enough, so most of us expressed ourselves as bloggers, which had become a big thing.
Nothing has changed
Looking at the media world today not much has changed. It’s the same defensive attitude towards a technology that has forever taken the media industry into a different orbit all together. Sure, there is TV on the Internet and sure, most media corporations are using blogs to raise awareness. And yes, we do see focused and well run media that are only Internet based. But the basic mindset hasn’t changed at all.
Most of the content isn’t produced primarily for the Internet but for either newspapers, radio or television. Publishing on the Internet is always secondary, and when it’s done it’s done on the same premises of storytelling that we know from linear media. There is no experimentation with different storytelling models. There is no taking advantage of the natural interactivity of content on the Internet. There is no conscious choice of merging text, images, photos and audio (the TIVA principle) in order to strengthen the story. At best we find the use of videos to break up and emotionalize a traditional article. It’s all still very narrow minded.
A game change?
The paradox is that while this defensive attitude to interactive storytelling is making media corporations bleed financially year after year, we have an entire gaming industry making millions of dollars based on the same principles of interactivity. Why not learn from it?
I know our purpose is different but the success of the gaming industry clearly shows that the experience of total media immersiveness is something that the users want and are willing to pay a lot of money for. Who says this recipe cannot be turned into an interactive production on foreign trade, cutting edge science or complicated politics?
As a journalist I don’t understand the lack of curiosity for telling stories in a way that makes it so much easier to simplify complicated stuff. And, as an entrepreneur it’s simply beyond me that the corporations of the media industry are not doing everything they can to develop their business model and product according to both the market and the technology at hand. It’s like they are trying to cook food on the same bad recipe over and over again, but no matter how good they become at it the food still tastes like shit. It cannot possibly get to taste any better unless they change the recipe. So why don’t they?
We are in 2013, and now we actually have the proper technology for creating amazing interactive stories that can be a competitive edge in our media businesses. All it takes is a focused investment and the will power to change our mindset.
The question is not if we will change it, because inevitably we will. The question is if we want to be the cause or the effect of that change. Or to put in another way, if you cannot manage a change of heart, then at least change your mind.