NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE PULLS PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY

Edward Martins, a Portuguese photographer living in London has had his photo essay about the U.S. mortgage and real estate bubble removed from The New York Times online slide show due to digital cloning and manipulation in photographs that were promoted as manipulation-free. A blogger initially noticed that three of Martin's photos were indeed digitally enhanced and manipulated in Adobe Photoshop. Photo District News an industry tabloid paper picked up on the story.

Although the manipulations might appear as a minor indiscretion, when understanding the nature of cloning, unfortunately for the New York Times' special presentation of an historical event in this country, an artist making aesthetic corrections to enhance journalistic photographs poses a major breach of ethics. It's bad enough when ordinary readers often don't recognize a construction for what it is, especially when dealing with issues like women's representation and body image, where a great deal of human flaws are removed or repaired. That's advertising. But Martin was commissioned to take photographs that were meant to serve as a historical document of our economic times. Good thing someone was paying attention and deconstructing the images.

See the manipulated photos.

Read Simon Owen's interview with the blogger who exposed the manipulations.

WHAT'S UP WITH MEDIA TECHNOLOGY CONVERGENCE?

The New York Times recently ran an article, What Convergence? TV's Hesitant March to the NET, about how we aren't going to see the Internet on television screens any time soon. This boils my blood. Ok, I'm probably one of the few who is chomping at the bit to get the Internet on the fabulous flat screen TV we have in our family room. Since we purchased and installed the TV sometime last year I have been dismayed over the fact that although the TV is great with high definition (HD) content, anything produced prior to HD is blurry and low quality at best. Albeit it's large and we can see the TV from a great distance, but three fourths of all content is not HD, so the quality is mediocre. Ok so I'm getting used to this fact. The public has been sold on how great the TV's are, but we also have to purchase other media devices, all which don't work together. And according to the New York Times article, spokespeople from SONY and Sharp basically think people don't care to get the Internet on their televisions. I'm pretty sure that people would like to be able to multi-task, and search the Internet to gain a multitude of media at the same time as watching the broadcast programming.

The TV manufacturers don't want to deal with all the problems that come with the concept. According to the New York Times article, mainly viruses. These companies have made money from the multiple devices that we have in our homes. If we have one large screen at home that does it all, that will begin to cut out the need for multiple devices like stereos, movie download devices, DVD players, etc all which will cut down profit. But, that seems like short term thinking. With media the opportunity for innovation and profit is wide open. So what's the problem? According to Convergence Culture, Where Old and New Media Collide, by MIT Professor, Henry Jenkins, "Delivery technologies become obsolete and get replaced; media, on the other hand, evolve. Recorded sound is the medium. CDs, MP3 files and 8-track cassettes are delivery technologies."

Media is a cultural production and a business. Every type of media whether we see it on a hand-held device, a PC or on a large screen television will continue to evolve. As Jenkins explains, "The perpetual tangle of cords that stands between me and my "home entertainment" center reflects the degree of incompatibility and dysfunction that exist between the media technologies...The old idea of convergence was that all devices would converge into one central device that did everything for you (a la the universal remote). What we are now seeing is the hardware diverging while the content converges."

Media content is growing and can be found everywhere. In window displays, digital billboards on the Turnpike, digital displays in elevators, at the grocery store and in train stations. We are watching a redefining of culture that is shifting all around, us every day. We are inside and outside of it, whether we are producing or consuming it. Media never stops converging, regardless of the devices available to incorporate the media we want to produce and consume. While the device manufacturers and technology companies try to sort it all out, consumers will continue to seek and use the media they want and work-around the devices. Anyway, a few months ago we were at a friend's house who had a device that allowed Internet browsing on a flat screen TV. I was very disappointed to realize that the text was so tiny it was impossible to read unless you were a foot away from the screen. Images were great, text not so great. I generally sit about 9 to 14 feet away from the TV. Oh well. I'm fine with my large computer screen.

SCREENS: HERE, THERE, AND EVERYWHERE.

There was a very interesting and exciting discussion that was published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine a week ago about the proliferation of screens and how it’s changed advertising forever. Benjamin Palmer, Lars Bastholm and Robert Rasmussen, three advertising guys spoke forthrightly about the state of advertising today. They discussed the fact that advertising has always been persuasive, but now it needs to make a shift into the authentic zone because young people can actually check on the Internet to see if the claims are even close to being true—creating a new marketing “transparency”. That can throw a real big curve ball to advertisers and their creative people. Lars Bastholm, who has worked onXbox, Coke and Motorola campaigns, sets the record straight, “Most media, like television, used to be a kind of flow. You’d sit down, you’d turn it on and you’d watch. The reason advertising is completely broken is that the flow doesn’t exist anymore. There’s no prime time. There’s no such thing as must-see TV. Everyone’s composing their own flow.”

We are still in the age where the advertisers are trying to figure out how to deal with all the content creation and the lack of the Millennial audience’s interest in television, the old-time prime advertising vehicle. Brands need to find a way to have a relationship with their audience. In 2006, BBDO’s GenWorld Teen Study argued, “If your brand wants a relationship with this generation (Millennials) connect them to each other…hype causes apathy, but meaning energizes. To stand out, be a brand that matters.”

Bastholm provides an incredibly astute case study about EA Sports, a brand getting it right and interacting with its audience. “On YouTube, someone posted a clip of himself playing the company’s Tiger Woods golf game. He put it up as a joke, laughing at EA Sports, because he had discovered a glitch in the programming that allowed Tiger to walk right out onto a pond next to the golf course and shoot his ball from there. So the company saw the video, and in response, it uploaded this ad to YouTube that said: “It’s not a glitch. He’s just that good.” The ad showed the real Tiger, in live action, actually walk on water and shoot a ball.” This shows an ingenious ability on the part of an advertiser to take a risk and fly with it. However, according to Benjamin Palmer that’s certainly not the norm at the moment. Advertisers are resistant to changing with the times and the shift in audience, “They assume their business practices will carry on forever.”

Well they simply won’t be able to afford to do that any longer. In February the digital signal will take over from analog and it won’t be too long before the “TV” just becomes a big screen to view all the content available—at home. There will be billions and billions of websites and other media and pop culture, and advertising will need to find its place, but not in its typical “overkill” manner. Then there’s the wide world of the mobile screen, as well. Brands will need to figure out how to make a long term, “authentic” connection between their brands and media consumers. They better get crackin’. In the meantime, it’s fun to watch and be a part of what’s happening.