Remake, Remodel: Women's Magazines in the Digital Age

Introduction: Questioning Media Identity in the Digital Age

INTRODUCTION Questioning Media identity in the Digital Age InOctober2011,asthenewsofSteveJobs’suntimelydeathsentshockwaves through the internet and technology communities, French telecom entrepreneur Jean-Louis Constanza posted a short video clip on YouTube as a tribute to Apple’s exalted leader.1 The opening scene, titled “This One Works,” featured Constanza’s one-year-old daughter playing with an iPad; the beguiled tot coos as the touchscreen responds to her every finger tap and swipe. In the following scene, “This One Does Not Work,” she replicates these tactile movements on a print edition of the women’s monthly Marie Claire. After poking and prodding the glossy pages with her tiny hands, the disillusioned child inspects her pointer finger to make sure that it still works (it does, of course). Sheisjoyfullyreunitedwiththetabletdeviceintheconcludingscene,“I’veHad It. Off to the One That Works.” Constanza’s exposition of the iPad/magazine juxtaposition then fills the screen: “For my one-year-old daughter, a magazine is an iPad that does not work. It will remain so for her whole life. Steve Jobs has coded a part of her [operating system].” The “A Magazine Is an iPad That Does Not Work” video was a viral sensation that generated more than four million YouTube hits and an unwieldy stream of viewer comments. Journalists and bloggers from the Atlantic, Gawker, the Huffington Post, and even Parenting magazine used the clip as fodder for debates about the generational and cultural shifts engendered by new technologies. To some, the video illustrated what “it really mean[s] to be a digital native” who knows only a world of instant gratification.2 Others suggested that Constanza’s video was merely a product of careful editing and sequencing. As one of the highest-rated YouTube comments read: “Your 2 . introduction child is behaving like a normal one year old. The iPad has bright colours and flashing lights. Of course it’s more instantly gratifying. . . . She’s being tactile. You’re being reactionary.”3 In either case, Constanza’s magazine-asa -broken-iPad metaphor shed light on the elusive nature of print media at the dawn of the twenty-first century. At a time when the boundaries between media industries are beginning to crumble, what distinguishes a magazine from any other medium or content provider that can be encoded as 1s and 0s? Put simply, what is a magazine? Indeed, recent transformations in the technologies, economies, and markets of mass communication raise fundamental questions about the identities of different media. If a medium—be it television, newspaper, magazine, or radio—is abruptly hewn from its technological form (i.e., a screen, printed page, or radio tuner), then what identifies it as such? Although this question may seem overly simplistic or, alternatively, needlessly abstract, the stakes for the individuals who earn a living as professional content creators are very real. As they transition their processes and products into a digital media environment , traditional media workers face daunting challenges: rapidly evolving technologies, intensified deadlines, amplified workloads, and new sources of competition. Further, the identities of producers are ostensibly blurring with those of consumers, threatening to undo a bifurcation on which the mass media system has steadily relied. Popular narratives about interactive media suggest that low-cost production and distribution technologies provide audiences with unprecedented access to the cultural circuit. To some, these activities mark a refraction of deeply entrenched flows of information and communication. Media scholar Henry Jenkins, who has written extensively on the affordances of participatory culture, argues that the technologies and tools of the new millennium have helped to shift structures of power in consumers ’ favor.4 Neologisms such as “prosumer,” “produsage,” and “co-creator” seemingly bespeak the euphoria surrounding digital media.5 Other scholars are more critical of the consumer empowerment narrative and suggest that the boosterish promise of democratic participation is nothing more than a “corporate ruse.”6 Regardless of where one stands on the participation-asempowerment /exploitation polemic, it is indisputable that media professionals are jockeying for eyeballs with a new generation of YouTube-created celebrities, MySpace-spawned singers, and bloggers–cum–political pundits. And this competition is quite fierce in the aptly named attention economy. In addition, the way in which media workers define their products has implications for the content that gets created and circulated throughout the mediated public sphere. Certainly the accuracy and depth of information questioning media identity · 3 made available to audiences shapes their understanding of the social...