What they call interactivity
: I’m now watching a panel on what they call hereabouts interactivity.
It’s not what I call interactivity.
They think it’s about creating pages with buttons for people to push. Flash! Wow! They look at this medium as the curator of a kids’ museum looks at an exhibit: Let’s give them buttons to push; let’s make things light up; that’ll make them happy; that’ll involve them. The moderator of the panel calls it “story-telling.” She calls it a means for the audience to “learn in a hands-on way.” She calls it “news experience.” They show us maps that click and let you do a simulation to fix the traffic problem in Seattle.
Pardon me, but that’s news as masturbation: the reader goes off in a corner and plays with himself.
I don’t call that interactivity.
Interactivity is people interacting with people.
In this new medium that the audience owns, it’s about — pardon me for repeating myself — the people finally having a voice. It’s about us in big media listening.
News is a conversation.
I’m debating whether to say all this and make an ass of myself or just sit here and grumble to you.
Grrrrrrr.
: The MSNBC person showed off big Flash things she called “interactives.” A new noun, to me.
She said, “We directly challenge the audiencde to think about an issue.”
Man, that’s condescending!
: The PBS person, to her credit, said that what’s missing is real two-way interactivity. Yea!
She showed off her interactives on — cliche alert — fair-trade coffee, asylum, and gentrification.
: What turns these people on is Sim news. It’s not real news. It’s simulated for your safety.
: This is horse-to-water journalism. They want to get you to drink. But what if we don’t want to?
