Just over a week ago, Elisa and I were in New York for some meetings. I'd been wanting to see the Hearst Corporation's new headquarters, which is known for being one of the only truly green structures in New York, and this week I'd get my chance. Back when I lived in New York nobody really gave a Swirl lightbulb about green buildings. We were still feeling rather self-satisfied with the fact that we recycled our trash.
The building was magnificent; our host explained that the water that coasted down the diagonal walls in the main lobby was recycled rain collected from the roof; all of the glimmering steel was recycled as well.
The first floors of the building were open and unsegmented. The cafeteria was wall-less and consisted of simple, modular counters decorated with festive presentations of stuffed mini-pumpkins and steaming food. I was disappointed; I'd just eaten a mediocre, unsubsidized lunch before arriving and couldn't partake in the sushi bar.
As I sat down, noticing a media celebrity lunching at the table behind us, a familiar feeling crept over me, one not totally pleasant or unpleasant, just familiar. I remembered my days working in New York, a smartly dressed young editor with overextended credit, working in an impressive building like this and returning to my rent-controlled apartment, where I'd eat a yogurt or maybe half a can of soup for dinner. At work in Mid-town, I went to fancy holiday parties and ate meals at expensive restaurants that I could charge to my corporate account, then I took the subway back to my shared walkup in Brooklyn. The diametric shift in quality of life that I experienced daily in New York was one that I didn't have the stomach for anymore. For this trip I'd flown economy and slept on a friend's couch to save on travel expenses, but this time the company was my own venture. My life matched my work.
The women we met with were razor smart and excited about their endeavors. I was impressed with their latest plans, thinking that the last time I'd worked for a traditional media company, in the 90s, things were in such flux (but not enough flux to adjust the top-down structure of any corporate entity). The words "new media" were fashionable to throw out, but the jury was still out on how to make it play nice with print. Now, we were discussing multiple ways of making content available to the public--from print to mobile.
As our guests showed us how to upload content on our cell phones I was struck by how radically things have been moving. Nothing can be assumed anymore. We can't presume that readers will read us because we have superstar writers or editors or photographers. The question is no longer how to pull readers, but how to push the content to them in a way that they could consume it. Media professionals can no longer guess the appetites of their readers, they need to make their content digestible for the meat eaters and vegans alike. The screaming message that bubbles up for me is that no one is the arbitor of rightness anymore. We're all right. Success is not about being right; it's about cultivating rightness for everyone.
The following week, I moderated a panel at the Web 2.0. conference, explaining briefly how community has shifted over the past five years. Listening to the women on my panel, who shared about how they organically grew huge groups of likeminded people from the impetus of desire alone, inspired me. And it inspired companies too, many of whom sent people to the conference to figure out the secret formula for loyalty. As we showed in that session--there are plenty of tricks, but there is no shortcutting community anymore. And here's the real secret: There never was.
I think my disorientation in the Hearst Building lie in my barely-conscious knowledge accumulated over the past seven years, as I moved from East Coast to West, through boom and bust, from corporation to start-up and now back in a place of co-existence with what I was running from. I could call my stalker the corporate world, but that's too simple. I think I was running from something endemic in the corporate media structure; an insistance on being right. And now I see pockets of humility, people questioning, people willing to knock down walls and open their space to get a better view of what is actually occuring, not what they say is.
I feel more qualified to be in media than ever before because I've seen it from all angles, and I'm also much less impressed with it: Steel has not always meant significance, hence my discomfort by the beautiful, echoing atrium and the smart sushi bar. In the end a media company requires an audience. Companies like Hearst, Newscorp, and Time Inc., have done this masterfully, but things are shifting inexorably. I could feel the tremors in the shiny, restored walls.
At the same time I thought that the Hearst building was a gorgeous metaphor, an acknowledgement that the mere accumulation of raindrops could result in something striking and powerful--the fact that the flowing streams are not manufactured makes them even more so. The recycled steel suggests a borrowing from the past, when pure commonality was all that it took to make something great.
I can't help but think that I needed to leave this world and then return to it to have noticed.
Ooh, Aah, I think I will need to read this again in a few days and let in sink in nice and slow.
Thanks Jory.
Posted by: Brian | November 13, 2006 at 01:03 PM