Dunder Mifflin and The Guardian face the same basic problem (even if the former isn’t a real organization): peddling paper-based products in the age of PCs, tablets, and smartphones. Granted, The Guardian’s problems are more complex than that, but in order for this comparison to work I begin on an overly reductionistic note. Interestingly, both parties decided to respond to this problem of increased irrelevance with advertisements. Please. Consider the following:
In the end branch manager, Michael Scott, couldn’t really escape the absurdity of running a company that sells paper: “Limitless paper in a paperless world.” But, of course, that is the joke and Dunder Mifflin is a corporate metaphor for Mr. Scott himself. R.I.P seasons 1-3 of The Office. Anyway. The Guardian (which began in some form in 1821) has a bit more at stake as it faces more than a shift away from print but also cultural and technological shifts that are changing how the world receives, reacts to, produces, and understands news. (Of course, my 2.5 readers are up on all this since this topic has come up before.) Needless to say, The Guardian’s advertisement (though I fear calling it that will cheapen their rhetorical artifact) is a bit more effective than Michael Scott’s:
Pretty intense, huh?
We find ourselves in a time where publications are going paperless, every one carries an adequate news camera on them (so to speak), and the means of expression are increasingly available and frictionless. So the question facing every newspaper is one of relevance – to say the least. I want to walk through this video a bit and comment on the argument(s) it makes, but I fear that might get cumbersome for one post (I mean, who reads a blog post more than a paragraph long?). So. More to come.
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