It’s about to be the long Fourth of July weekend, so I’m not going to post tomorrow or Friday because who should be reading about entertainment on a holiday weekend? (And since people aren’t at their desks “working”, traffic plummets for the whole internet.)
Wait, you still want something to read? Me too. The weekends are an underserved time for iPad wielding parents looking to avoid their children. The job of the Sunday paper hasn’t been adequately replaced as most websites I read don’t update on weekends. (See my above parenthetical.)
In honor of the long weekend, here are some “Long Reads” to take up your time, collated into one place. This is a grab bag of articles covering everything from social media to journalism to great investigative pieces. We’ll start with some great pieces on that last topic. When entertainment journalists go in-depth, they show how great entertainment journalism can be at its peak.
1. “How Movie Theaters are Exploiting Their Janitors” by Gene Maddaus in Variety
Maddaus describes how the forces of contracting, immigrant labor and lax oversight–with the pressure on profit margins–result in vulnerable people working for less than minimum wages in troubling conditions. (I linked to it here.)
2. “L.A.’s Housing Crisis Hits Hollywood: The Entertainment Workers Living in Their Cars” by Katie Kilkenny in The Hollywood Reporter
This long read never made it into a weekly column, which is a shame. Los Angeles has a housing shortage problem, and it impacts all workers, but especially those at the bottom of the income ladder due to rising rents. Unfortunately, that includes a lot of workers in Hollywood, like those “below the line”, even folks like writer’s assistants, which should tell you how widespread this problem is.
3. “The Dark Forest of the Internet” by Yancey Strickland
I’d read a few years back about the concept of “dark social media”. That’s the idea that while we can track and observe some social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, others are mostly unobservable to marketers, like text messages and email. (If only we knew how many old men emailed about Blue Bloods, in between emails with dirty jokes and political diatribes.)
Strickland flips this analogy, warning that the observable internet is actively dangerous, using the analogy of a dark forest. A thought-provoking read, and you have to love a Liu Cixin reference to start. (It also pairs well with my final article recommendation; hat tip to MediaREDEF for surfacing; part II here.)
4. “Shady Numbers and Bad Business: Inside the Esports Bubble” by Cecilia D’Anastasio
D’Anastasio approaches the world of esports as someone who understands the passion of esports fans, but also as a sober journalist aware of the hype cycle the industry is undergoing. Lots of good numbers and, more importantly, analysis of potentially bad numbers. (I wrote about this in a weekly column a few weeks back.)
5. Youtube’s Problems in 2 Articles:
“On Youtube a Network of Pedophiles is Hiding in Plain Site” by K.G. Orphanides in Wired
& “YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic Videos Run Rampant” by Mark Bergen in Bloomberg
As a society, are we overreacting to the dangers of “engagement”? Reading this pair of articles on Youtube, I’d say not. Even if you understand the scale of the problem for Youtube is immense–a problem in the billions of videos and trillions of interactions–these articles impart the idea that Youtube traded off the risk of pedophilia and pushing conspiracies for profit. (My extended thoughts here.)
6. TVAnswerman’s 50 Rules of Good Journalism by Phillip Swann
If you’re not an aspiring journalist, this may not interest you. But I found it fascinating and think a lot of breathless media coverage would deflate just a bit if we all followed these rules. I don’t agree with every rule, as a commentator I don’t follow a few, but still found quite a few good ideas. In particular, read and write everyday and understand that your social media feed is still your journalism. A good reminder.
7. “Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet” by Andrew Marantz in The New Yorker
The opening paragraph captures what I find fascinating about Reddit: it’s huge but many Americans have never heard of it. Or just vaguely heard of it. It’s a social platform I’ve dabbled in, but tend to avoid because it’s too good. Too addicted. As a result, I call it the underrated social platform. (Read that here.) Marantz has the best long piece I’ve read on Reddit.
8. “Status as a Service” by Eugene Wei at The Remains of the Day
Ideally, I don’t link to an article until I’ve actually, you know, read it. Twitter would have a different feeling of virality if we all followed that rule. (I definitely retweet lots of articles without reading them.) Eugene Wei’s article (nee novella) was popular when it dropped and I’ve finally read the entire thing. It resonated with me in particular because while ostensibly I want to share my thoughts on the business of entertainment, really I’m a status seeking monkey using my writing to build social capital. Brilliant.
And since I’m late to my chosen social platforms–Twitter, Linked-In and Quora–which makes accumulating social capital even harder. Two lessons in one article is a great hit rate.
Some other thoughts:
– I love a good quad chart. This article gives us a great one.
– This idea pairs well with a recent HBR article on the “first 1,000 customers” that’s been in my head too.
– The entertainment dimension explains why so many social platforms want original video content…but I’m still skeptical those videos add value if the platform isn’t useful in other ways.
– Being “skilled” in the way each platform demands may be why I find Twitter unhelpful. My thoughts naturally run longer than 240 characters.
Enjoy the reads and the long weekend.
(Oh, and of course, if you haven’t read my long series on Game of Thrones or Star Wars or M&A, obviously start there!)
