you got your media in my peanut butter, I got my peanut butter in your media …

To be honest, I like my media like my peanut butter … crunchy. I don’t want some store-brand peanut butter slapped on a couple slices of Wonder Bread and stuffed into a sandwich bag. Nope, I want something that’s going to stick to the roof of my mouth and is, at times, a little tough to swallow. To be honest, I don’t just want a peanut butter sandwich. I want choices when I’m deciding about dinner. I’m never sure what I’m in the mood for until the time comes around and I’m equally unsure how I want to consume my media … I just want to help out in the kitchen.

I’m not looking for the Emeril Lagasse of media. (The truth is that I’d probably kick someone in the teeth if they yelled “BAM!” every time they posted to their blog or filed a story.) But I do want someone who knows how to cook and someone who isn’t afraid to spice things up a little. Basically, I want a media bouillabaisse that I can help cook. As Jenkins quoted French cybertheorist Pierre Levy: “None of us can know everything; each of us knows something; and we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and combine our skills” (Jenkins; 2006; P. 4). Continuing with the restaurant theme, what do you think would happen if you walked into the kitchen and told the chef you wanted to help prep the meal? It’s likely that you’d be shown the door. Well, the same thing would probably happen if you walked into any major media outlet’s newsroom. Now, think about restaurants that have a B.Y.O.B. policy. The chef and owner want you to bring in your favorite wine and add it to the mix. They want you to use their dinner as the centerpiece and allow you to accent it. This is how most media outlets view user-generated content. Newspapers and tv stations won’t let you in the kitchen, but it’s okay if you want to bring the wine. But what happens when you don’t like your dinner?

The attitude of traditional media outlets is, “you’ll eat what’s on your plate or you don’t get any dessert.” Now that we can cook our own meals and don’t have to settle for whatever slop these mass media cafeterias are slapping on our plates, but they’re still going to try to force-feed us their cooking. In is lecture Felton described the backlash against Sony when the electronics company introduced the VCR. They were threatened with lawsuits because they allowed users to record copyrighted material. As emerging media platforms like YouTube flush out, traditional “media barons” will continue to attempt to hold onto their “centralized empires” (Jenkins; 2006; P. 5). Companies, regardless of the industry, will always attempt to hold onto their stake, their claim. The difference is that we’re in the midst of a transition. As this tipping point approaches, media professionals and novices are attempting to figure out what’s next. As Jenkins wrote, this “age of media transition” brings “mixed signals and competing interests” (Jenkins; 2006; P. 11).

In some ways it’s okay for media companies to hold on, especially to what belongs to them. By that I mean their content, their products, their work … not the notion that the audience is divinely theirs. I’ve heard people in the media business make cracks about free speech; they’d say it’s not free because someone pays for the press. Now, without the need to fork out piles of cash to purchase a printing press in order to reach an audience, the value isn’t the expensive press, but creative product. The person or company producing that content should be able to protect their original creations and anyone who uses it, retools it, retouches it—or anything else—should have to credit its source and get permission before using it. Is this likely? Probably not.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Introduction: “Worship at the alter of convergence” (pp. 1-24). Convergence Culture. New York: NYU Press.

Felton, E. (2004). Rip, mix, burn, sue: Technology, politics, and the fight to control digital media. Princeton University President’s Lecture Series, no. 1.