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06 Aug 08

What's really killing newspapers: They're no longer the best providers of social currency. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine

Shafer's subtitle says it all, "[Newspapers are] no longer the best providers of social currency." What's "social currency"? It's "the information we acquire and then trade—or give away—to start, maintain, and nurture relationships with our fellow humans."

In other words, it's no longer relevant to your interaction with friends and co-workers and other citizens whether or not you've all read the same newspaper that morning. There is other social currency that's more valuable, more interesting, more useful -- as currency.

In that sense, the "news" is secondary to "currency" / "value." It seems that newspapers need to figure out -- if they can, if it's possible -- how to leverage currency, not news.

www.slate.com/2196485 - Preview

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Not that long ago, the daily newspaper was an indispensable coiner of social currency, and it gave its readers piles of the stuff in each edition. The phrase, which comes from sociology, is often used to describe the information we acquire and then trade—or give away—to start, maintain, and nurture relationships with our fellow humans.
Even folks who don't care for sports skimmed the sports pages for a little something about the games and athletes so they could engage in essential small-talk.
- - "currency" - on 2008-08-06
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- nothing could beat the newspaper as a source for socially lubricating conversation. How many times have you heard a conversation start, "Didja see that article ..."?
- By sniffing the bits of social currency an acquaintance had withdrawn from the pages of his daily and was trying to cash
- the sniffer could learn reams about his social contact.
- news can "be used in a variety of interpersonal situations—to look smart, connect with friends and family and even move up the socio-economic ladder" and "maintain relationships."
- the social currency found in a newspaper has a relatively short shelf life.
- Newspapers thrived, in part, because reading just one edition provided only a few cents' worth of social currency. Compounding your earnings requires that you read the damn thing nearly every day. Ignore a couple of issues, and you get left behind.
- to read a newspaper and then keep your trap shut is to miss the point: Newspapers are designed to be read and argued over. You've got to spend social currency to make social currency.
  - Well, and perhaps there's the rub: the places where you can "spend" your currency (and also create more currency yourself) have become distributed. That is, it used to be that newspapers were the one-stop shop you went to for acquisition of currency, which you then spent, and in the spending, compounded. But now you can acquire currency in several places, and furthermore, your "spending habits" have changed: they're distributed now. - on 2008-08-06
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- Other institutions do far better jobs at issuing social currency these days.
- A well-executed Facebook presence, like a superb pontification at the bar or a great phone-in to sports talk radio, demonstrates one's status within one's existing social network.
  - - see last note (above): you (consumer) aren't just getting social currency by spending what you bought at the newspaper; you get it by creating your own, which also means that the creation of currency is distributed. Widely. - on 2008-08-06
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- And the newspaper isn't the only media hub suffering in the new era. Radio, which once served a similar social role with its menu of music, news, and talk, is plummeting.
- the decline of newspapers has nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with the changing world.
  - Right! don't blame the bloggers (citizen journalists) or whomever; it's the structures/ contexts - on 2008-08-06
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04 Mar 08

Libraries as 'urban hangouts' Crosscut Seattle

Nice commentary on Witold Rybczynski's popular slide essay on Slate (see http://www.slate.com/id/2184927/). Good to see a native give some feedback on Rybczynski's take on Seattle library, too. I have to agree with David Brewster that the Salt Lake City Library is a knock-out: really gorgeous.

www.crosscut.com/...raries+as+%27urban+hangouts%27 - Preview

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