In Defense of Endism

First, apologies for the thin posting last week. I was in New York  for the usual frenzy of back-to-back meetings, both Long Tail and otherwise.  (I did get to see the Gates, but sadly only at night. It's not the same).  I'll try to catch up with a few quick posts here on some loose threads, and then return to your regularly scheduled stream of observations, answers and other half-bakery.

One of the eyebrow-raisers in the media world last week was the transcript of Michael Wolff's keynote remarks to the 2005 SIIA Information Industry Summit in New York City. [Disclosure: Michael is the media columnist for Vanity Fair, which is a corporate sibling of Wired. ] It was controversial (so much so that he reportedly asked for it to be removed from the site that originally posted it) because in the midst of some quite smart observations about the challenges facing mainstream media he made a rather broad swipe at the Wall Street Journal, claiming that it lost its currency with the chattering classes when it put its online content behind a subscription wall.

I, however, thought it was interesting for an entirely different reason: flagrant "endism".

In the Q&A, according to the transcript, Wolff suggested that Consumer Reports was also suffering from consumer rejection due to its policy of charging for access to its website. "It once occupied a very clear position in the opinion market, and it now occupies a kind of marginal position," he said. "Marginal" is one of those words that means "effectively dead" and represents the sort of wording that Wolff wields often to great effect; his latest book, after all, is "Autumn of the Moguls".

A questioner then challenged him, and his response was far more reasonable:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Consumer Reports has almost two million paying subscribers, so I'm just curious. This thing you keep saying about how paying for content devalues it ... I'm confused by that. Can you just elaborate on that a little?

WOLFF:  Well, I think Consumer Reports at one time was the brand in product evaluation. That's what you would say: "Check Consumer Reports." But if you want to buy something now, it's "Check the Web." It's not that Consumer Reports doesn't have a business, but it has certainly lost its position as the grail of product evaluation.

Actually, Consumer Reports says it has about 4 million subscribers, which by anyone's estimation makes it non-marginal (although I don't get the magazine, I do pay $26/year to subscribe to its excellent website). Vanity Fair, or for that matter Wired, would love to have anything close to that.  But I think I know what Wolff meant. To understand his claim, you have to realize that there are three kind of people, which being a science geek, I will describe in physics terms (that noise is the sound of a readership stampeding for the exits):

    A) Position People
    B) Velocity People (first derivative)
    C) Acceleration People (second derivative)

Category A people think: "4 million subscribers is a lot. Consumer Reports must be doing something right."

Category B people think: "It used to be 4.2 million. Consumer Reports is in decline."

Category C people think:  "They lost 200,000 readers in three years! Consumer Reports is dead."

Now I should quickly add that I have no idea if Consumer Reports is indeed losing readers; I just made those figures up for illustrative purposes (and to add to the evidence that blogs are not journalism).  The point is that you probably know all three kinds of people I've described, and you may have noticed that while the first two perspectives are accurate, the third, which is clearly false, is the one that gets all the attention. People are drawn to grand overstatement, especially if it's in service of a broader point.

The pinnacle of grand overstatement is endism, the declaration that the moment something stops growing it is effectively dead. In this, Wolff is in good company. If a corporation stops growing, Wall Street investors not only treat it as roadkill but usually clamor for the CEO's head on their wall. After a former colleague of mine at The Economist wrote "The Death of Distance" about the communications revolution, another colleague wrote a piece noting the several hundred other business  books whose titles start the same way. And we at Wired do it all the time, including our new cover story on "The End of Radio" (although in fairness we did add an "as we know it").

The reason endism is not necessarily a sin is that all three of those perspectives are legitimate. It is, of course, important for some people to keep their feet on the ground and focus on the absolute reality of what's around them, thus category A. It is also important for some people to keep an eye on trends, thus category B. Finally, a few people should be looking around the corner, trying to spot leading indicators that may turn into trends and finally into absolute reality, which leads us to category C, where Wolff and Wired occasionally meet.

At The Economist the unofficial internal motto was "simplify, then exaggerate". This is obviously a successful model in sure hands; the art of analysis is knowing the line between dramatic distillation and  reductio ad absurdum. The secret, of course, is to be right. If Radio is indeed about to be transformed by technology and readers are persuaded by our evidence and arguments (as I'm sure they will be; it's an excellent package, which should be online later this week), then they will understand our meaning of "End".

We at Wired, like Wolff, live in the whiplash world of acceleration space, where tiny fluctuations in trend velocity can either be blips or the beginnings of the next big thing. We're pretty good at telling one from the other, and thus I think our occasional endism is seen as the effective rhetorical device it is. Industries really do crumble and reshape, and it's our mandate to spot the signs first.

As for Wolff, he too has a point. As much as I like Consumer Reports' website, I tend to go to Amazon reviews and even Google first because I'm more likely to find a recent review of whatever I'm thinking about buying. And I'm a subscriber;  non-subscribers don't even have that choice. I think of Consumer Reports mostly for big-ticket items and consumer durables, like cars and washing machines. That's enough to keep me as a subscriber, but it's not enough to retain the position as "grail of product evaluation".  Does that make it "marginal"? Perhaps not, but it's worth noting all the same.

 

Comments

[relaxing]

Very interesting article.

A corporation's goal is to maximize profits for its investors. Wall Street's goal is to maximize their investments by finding corporations with maximal profits and a maximal future increase in profits. These are the Acceleration people.

I wonder if this is the root of the Acceleration culture, or does it go deeper?

Looking at the 2nd derivative is useful not just to those interested in profit, but those interested in the longview, in predicting trends, if not to banked on then to be used as content, because the acceleration view is inherently sensationalistic.

[Jeremy]

You're sorry for not posting more? What kind of self-important nonsense is that?

[fling93]

I don't know that Wall Street is as good a comparison as it sounds. A corporation is only worth something to a stockholder if it either grows or pays out dividends. The latter is perfect for retirees who seeks to earn an income from their investments. But it's not hard to pick what's a good investment when all you care about is stability and yield, so as I sees it, Wall Street can't supply very much value to that crowd (except the ones who need hand-holding), and instead cater to those looking for growth (who also tend to try and beat the market and trade more often, which means more commissions).

[Michael J.]

Re: Jeremy's self-important comment (dual meaning intended):

It's a friggin' BLOG! The whole point is to take your material and make it the most important thing in the world, knowing, in the post-modern sense, that it isn't, really.

Of course it's a conceit. To think anything is as serious as it appears is totally clueless.

And anyway, maybe he got email wondering if everything was okay, and he was being lazy by not responding to all 500 letters individually. Or perhaps the omniscient Jeremy knows this to be false?

[David]

Jeremy, what kinds of self-important nonsense are there? If you had provided a list, perhaps Chris could pick one, or we could all take a vote. One kind I can think of is making obnoxious comments on other people's blogs. Sorry I took so long to respond.

[Jason Coleman]

First, thanks for the post. You had posted last week (?) about a steady supply of short post versus occasionally posting some lengthy articles. I'm all a fan of some more substantial discussions, such as today’s (even if Jeremey disagrees); or at least my schedule prefers the occasional.
What about trend-setters such as Wired (and perhaps, Wolff, if he too is a professional opinion adjuster)? Don't they accelerate readers to buy into the next big thing by writing their predictions of the future. Not that I'm complaining, as I'm just a geek always in search of the latest toy. However, this all seems like self-fulfilling prophecy: the trend-setters telling us what's next.

[Kaleberg]

Wow, did you miss an opportunity. Consider:

A) Position People
B) Velocity People (first derivative)
C) Acceleration People (second derivative)

should have been followed by:

D) Jerks (third derivative)

I'm not making it up. That's the name for the third derivative of position. The name for the fourth is inauguration.

[Jeremy]

You are correct, that was rude and I apologize.

I have been reading too many blogs about blogging, I suppose . . .

[Tim McGaha]

At the risk of being pedantic, the technical name for a fourth derivative is "snap."

It's not the sort of thing you see every day...

[Azeem Azhar]

After a former colleague of mine at The Economist wrote "The Death of Distance" about the communications revolution, another colleague wrote a piece noting the several hundred other business books whose titles start the same way.

As I recall it was the same person!

[chris anderson]

Az,

Nope. It was Pam who wrote the note. Although Frances may have been editing the section that week, and certainly saw enough fun in it to let it thru.

Apols to everyone else for this insidery stuff; Az and I were at the Econ together back in the day.

[micro sd speicherkarten]

Some of you believe religiously that culture has absolutely no connections to social structures

There's a big gap between that statement and the belief that culture is 100% economically determined. Is there a relationship between hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic and Brecht and Weill's "Threepenny Opera"? Of course there is. Does the fact that the Weimar economy was very bad mean that art produced at the time was very bad? Of course not.