A few months ago, Bitch Magazine asked for handouts from the feminist community. In their words “We need to raise $40,000 by October 15th in order to print the next issue of Bitch.” Even though my conspicuous eye-rolls and pages of Bitch are well acquainted, I considered donating some cash as a practice of my conviction that we must support feminist discussions of all kinds everywhere, period. But given, like, a fraction of a second thinking about it I realized how ludicrous it was for Bitch to feel it so crucial to print anything at all.
As their wildly successful begging campaign attests to (which I commend them for running so splendidly), the internet is a much more effective method of community-building and communication than one-sided print media.
No one is wringing their hands and gnashing their tongue more than me about the impending death of print media. The whole industry has been flipping out with all the grasping moans and lashing desperation of a Joan Crawford death scene. But what puts the “tragi” in “tragicomedy” here is the possibility that high quality content that deserves to be one-sided is losing its forum. Some writers are still great—few, but some—and deserve to speak and be heard. Those writers do not contribute to Bitch.
Websites like Feministing, Feministe, Racialicous and the Curvature consistently produce high-quality analyses and critical essays, and spark insightful and community-building discussions online. The emphasis on discourse-based content is not just a given in web communities, it was the foundation of the feminist movement and will continue to be the bedrock of our progress.
Bitch’s endeavor to fund their one-sided anachronism for as long as they can con us into giving our money to them, as opposed to proposing a more cost-effective online presence which fuels the productive work of an inter-play between professional and user-generated content, is short-sighted and bizarre.
In their appeal, the Bitch editors claimed that “it’s not magazines like US Weekly or Vogue that you’ll see disappearing from the newsstands—they have the parent companies and the resources to weather industry ill winds”. This assertion isn’t just false, it’s self-destructive. In fact, it is precisely because the major media players are giants that they’re falling so hard to their knees. They’re cumbersome and steeped in decades of tradition. The sentimentality they lug around for the glory years of their industry is making it hard to be lithe and adapt in a changing landscape. The young, hip, women who hail from a tradition of community building that pre-dates the internet are at an extraordinary advantage to be at the helm of innovation for successful online community building. The absurdity of measuring themselves against the large media conglomerates and demanding special help in order to mimic the terms of Goliath’s survival is the exact opposite of the approach that we need to take.
(As an aside, I consider it manipulative for the editors to name US and Vogue magazines in particular in their appeal, which will immediately read to Bitch subscribers as “bad, stupid, harmful to women, and therefore less deserving of such corporate protectionism than the comparatively righteous Bitch, which we now feel obligated to ‘save’”. You know what else won’t be disappearing? The New Yorker and Harper’s to name a few. How about Vanity Fair and O Magazine? They’ll survive too. And why? Not paternalism but superior content. Bitch aggressively steers the conversation elsewhere).
This is not a piece of writing geared toward scolding Bitch or their supporters. I want to underscore only the invigorating fact that the websites I mentioned above have leaped gloriously ahead of Bitch, and it serves us feminists to recognize a number of things this proves:
1) As hard as it is to admit or confront, the contemporary feminist community doesn’t have “public intellectuals” worthy of a print publication. Just something to chew on there.
2) What we do have in spades, is interested and interesting women of all ages ready to engage with one anther online as Feministe and Feministing attest to. This is extraordinary and could be key not only in generating feminism’s “next wave” but (one hopes) the accompanying public intellectuals to support it.
3) Women’s online communities could be key in unlocking the future of publishing and written media. Women need to figure out why this may be (I’m working on it), and how to capitalize on it, before anyone else does.
More on the future of publishing to come. Stay tuned. Bitch: all the best! Keep the techno-zeitgeist alive.
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January 15, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Sarah J
As always, I love you for your willingness to put shit out there.
And here, you’re absolutely right.
The death of old media is in part the death of our need to be talked at. I say this with three print copies of The Nation next to me (home of several of my fave “public intellectuals,” including Naomi Klein and Barbara Ehrenreich).
A friend and I were discussing the lack of liberal public intellectuals a few weeks back. It was in the context of television and how well the conservative movement has done in funding think tanks and providing “experts” for television.
But especially in the feminist movement, you’re quite right that the desire to conserve print is the desire to conserve some form of authority. One that we simply don’t need.
Blogging is not journalism, but neither, for the most part, is what Bitch does. It’s also opinion writing.
The largest problem that I can see with the move to the Web is that it is harder to monetize. Much as I hate the word, the fact remains that Virginia Woolf’s argument from “A Room of One’s Own” remains true. I’m broke, I have to work to make a living, and that leaves me less time for actual journalism, blogging, reading, research, and creative work. If I cannot make money doing any of those things, then I have to find another way.
But rather than clinging to print as the last way we can make money (sort of) as writers and therefore dedicate ourselves to being if not public intellectuals, at least stimulators of the discourse (yeah, that sounds pretentious too, but I can’t think of a better word), we need to be figuring out how we can make a living as writers and artists in a world that gets its media primarily over the Web.
January 17, 2009 at 9:23 pm
heartoffalsehood
I mostly agree with your analysis here, but I’m currently wondering if a (continued) transition into digital media from print media could limit the ability of lower-class individuals to engage with these ideas.
January 18, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Pop Feminist
It’s certainly not perfect, but even if someone can’t afford a computer, most libraries have them available free for use. The key is, with the internet, lower income people will have the power to be heard on the internet. The best way to connect with ideas in media before was to send a letter to the editor! How quaint! It opens the channels of communications to people of all kinds (as of now, barring only the most impoverished and from corrupt/struggling nations, but one wonders if these people read The New Republic either).
But there is a greater opportunity for those with identity connections to these disinherited people to create awareness and positive communities on their behalf.
Again– it’s not perfect, but it’s a progressive step.
And Sarah– it’s an exciting time to be active online! The “simulators of discourse” may not end up being the great public intellectuals (though a healthy amount will, I think), but more will be looked to as salonieres– creating the forum where intellectuals gather and thrive!