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January 18, 2005

Where Else Would I Learn About Broad Social Trends?

Time does what it does best: come up with a silly name for a loosely defined trend!

Today's mail included the most recent (dated January 24, 2005) issue of Time. Beneath the double-sided cover-wrap hawking the latest edition of the Time Almanac and adjacent to a promise to reveal "The Truth About SOCIAL SECURITY" was the cover splash: "Meet The Twixters, young adults who live off their parents....They're not lazy...THEY JUST WON'T GROW UP." Twixters. Right. They're not Tweens...they're not Hipsters...they're the Twixters! Ignoring for a moment the mystery of exactly how these issues of Time continue to find their way to my mailbox (as I have never actually paid them for a subscription...I think it has something to do with some sort of credit-card come-on from a few years back), the cover story did lead me to pause for a moment in admiration. Say what we will about the general relevance and/ or market niche of the weekly newsmagazine in the Internet Age, but we cannot deny the flair of the Times and Newsweeks of the world in doing one specific thing: identifying and naming extremely generic and broad social trends.

Remember how they taught us what a yuppie was? Or how to wear flannel and be part of grunge? Imagine that you'd been surrounded by people who'd forsaken bread and pasta in favor of six helpings of bacon at each meal -- without the newsweeklies, you might not have know about the Atkins craze!

Without getting into the content of the article (the basics = more and more people in their 20s are forsaking Marriage And Kids by age 22 in favor of job-hopping, moving around a lot, and having sex with lots of different people, which, ahem, shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to anyone who's within three decades of their 20s), it does clue you in a bit to the market for the newsweekly. That is, it isn't so much for breaking news, and it certainly isn't for a younger demographic. Sure, each of the big newsweeklies can boast a few venerable columnist types who can offer us some in-depth analysis or insider dope on the major political happenings of the past week, but in terms of new information, the weekly format seriously restricts the amount of new information that each issue can offer. This has always been the case, of course (we've had newspapers for a few hundred years), but the proliferation of Internet news, the 24-hour cablers, and an overall media environment that gobbles up and chews out stories in hours rather than days means that the newsweeklies sit even farther away from the stories that occupy the day's agenda than ever before. So, if it's tougher to do news in a meaningful way, there's plenty of room for lifestyle pieces, opinions about which products are most worthy of consumption, and broad social commentary about large demographic trends -- all aimed for a market that is decidedly suburban and middle-income. (Also, don't forget the quarterly issue with the word "Jesus" or "God" on the cover. Those do well too.) We could say that the evolution of the newsweeklies fits into the broader transformation of the product that is The News, and that other similar big news brands will be forced to admit that they're lifestyle magazines as well (New York Times, we're looking in your direction), or we could just say that the marketing department won, and that the editorial direction of Time is dictated by subscription growth and advertising revenue. That is, give 'em puff pieces on the latest anti-aging treatments and advice on the best new cell phones, and we can all collect nice paychecks and buy flat-screen TVs.

Either way, if you want to make sure you're up on the latest manufactured buzzwords and names for exciting new demographic groups, then get thee a Time subscription! Or at least pretend to apply for a credit card.

Posted by thatkid at January 18, 2005 4:27 PM under The Papers

January 18, 2005

Where Else Would I Learn About Broad Social Trends?

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