Media Criticism

I was scouring through the magazine rack at a local bookstore this past week and came across a British publication called Monocle. The splashy photos, digestible articles and mixture of the superficial with the complex appealed to me. I must admit that my search for magazines on a weekly basis is as much to find potential gift ideas for friends and family as it is a way to expand my horizons. Nonetheless, I came across an interesting article in the magazine about a pioneering Dutch newspaper called NRC Next.

I have conducted a bit of research on the Dutch newspaper market and come across a competitive marketplace that is deep and wide in terms of quality. Monocle’s article raises the question of the sanity of editor Hans Nijenhuis in his efforts to break into the Dutch newspaper world. I enjoyed reading the article because the entire staff seems to be taking a blogging and online approach to print media that could shake up the nation’s staid journalism.

One example of NRC Next’s intrepid approach to the daily newspaper came last month with a typical story of murder and intrigue. Longstanding newspapers in the Netherlands pasted pictures and details about the murder all over their pages in an effort to feed the public sensationalistic stories under the guise of public information. NRC Next provided a small mention deep in the pages of their paper and provided an additional box the next day providing a self-reflective view of the Dutch media’s coverage. The remarkable thing about NRC Next’s rising success is that it shares office space and resources with major newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

NRC Next has 55,000 subscribers and 30,000 additional readers on a daily basis. This number is relatively small but it takes small steps to take a nation’s media by storm. We need newspapers and other print publications to take a serious approach to criticizing media practices from within. I know that plenty of people love The Daily Show but it is a comedy show, not a serious effort at journalism. If you don’t believe me, read every interview with Jon Stewart over the last five years. NRC Next and other endeavors that boil the news down into something digestible and usable for young professionals will see a growth in their market share because people want information. The traditional media is not providing the coverage necessary for people to act on a daily basis and the blogosphere is unreliable due to the vitriol of most writers (myself included at times).