Will the coronavirus be bad for print? Amol Rajan argues it will: “Much of what was going to happen in any case will now happen suddenly: publishing history is suddenly accelerated. The shift from print to digital at virtually all publications will be radically sped up. A lot of publishers are simply going to run out of cash. One regional publisher has being ringing up contractors asking if it can delay payments by three months at least.”

The invention of hiking: “Claude-François Denecourt was a career soldier in the French Army, but was dismissed from his post as concierge of a Fontainebleau barracks in 1832 because of his supposed liberal views. He took to wandering in the forest to combat his depression and there discovered the essential pleasures of traipsing through nature. From then on, he devoted himself to developing and promoting the Fontainebleau forest for the general public. Today he should be recognized and appreciated as both a clever entrepreneur and a pioneer—if not the inventor—of nature tourism.” Well, nature tourism had already been around for a long time. Still, it’s an interesting piece with lots of intriguing images.

In praise of the Post Office: “The Post Office’s hopelessly outdated branches are a little oasis of physical continuity in a churning commercial world where fast food menus are eye-straining screens, McDonald’s restaurants are demolished and rebuilt for remodeling purposes, and the Comfort Inn logo looks like a piece of cracked macaroni. You can be sure the beleaguered, inefficient Post Office, like the perfectly serviceable private label at your supermarket, won’t be taking your money and spending it on stuff like this. Sure, a little freshening up wouldn’t hurt, and the Post Office knows that. But would you really like to pay more to mail a package so the USPS can take on more design consultants? All of this, however, is just a bonus. The Post Office is admirable and important less for its curmudgeonly time-capsule vibe and more for its status as that rare government service that’s a genuinely universal civic amenity.”

I linked to an article a few months ago on the suspicious handling of ancient manuscripts by Oxford professor Dirk Obbink. He has now been arrested and released on bail as local police investigate.

The playful work of America’s greatest sculptor: “If Alexander Calder were alive to visit the kids’ department of Pottery Barn or West Elm today, he would probably feel deeply torn, which tells you a lot about America’s best-known sculptor. He might well say that the shelves of knockoff mobiles ‘nauseate’ him, as he did when DIY mobile-making guides started proliferating among craft hobbyists in the 1950s. Gimmicky popularizing of his work pained him. Then again, he would likely take real pleasure in discovering that his greatest sculptural innovation has found new life as an enchanting crib toy.”

Essay of the Day:

In The Walrus, Tatum Dooley visits the offices of #Paid—a consulting firm that wants to help companies manage influencer advertising—and writes about what increased social influencing means for our society:

“In 2018, mega-influencer Luka Sabbat (then with 1.4 million followers) was sued for failing to fulfill a $60,000 deal that required him to wear Snapchat’s new product, Snap Spectacles, at high-end fashion shows. (Sabbat had agreed to a minimum of four Instagram posts that included the product; he uploaded only two.) The effectiveness of influencers was further questioned last May, when Instagram star @Arii (then with 2.5 million followers) launched her own clothing line and sold fewer than thirty-six shirts.

“It’s failures like these that Bryan Gold is trying to prevent. Gold, a twenty-seven-year-old entrepreneur, is the co-founder and CEO of #Paid, a pioneering Toronto-based software company that deals in influencers. #Paid exists somewhere between talent agency and ad agency—it doesn’t directly manage influencers, but it’s positioning itself as a professional middleman that can work with big businesses to develop and oversee social media campaigns while wrangling the thousands of young social media users who have the desired captive audiences.

“Gold knows that influencers have a checkered reputation: despite the value they offer brands, they can be inexperienced and unpredictable, making them potential threats to companies’ images. But the roster that works for #Paid, he explains, is different from the rest. For one, his nearly 22,000 social media stars aren’t mere influencers, he insists—they’re creators.

“I trip on this bit of semantics again and again over the few days I spend at the #Paid office—a contemporary open space complete with the requisite startup perks of LaCroix sparkling water and a Ping-Pong table. Each time ‘influencers’ leaves my mouth, I earn a stern look. The difference between the two, various staff members explain to me, is that, unlike typical influencers, #Paid creators care about what they do. They are discerning about whom they’ll work with. (Gold tells me that, when his company received a shipment of a weight-loss product, they sent it right back.) I’m told that, whenever a #Paid creator embarks on a campaign—with, say, Coca-Cola or Uber Eats—the result is an authentic expression of how they feel about the product; the relationship is about more than just making money. ‘A lot of the creators I spoke with wanted to use their influence for good,’ Gold tells me. ‘They were genuinely passionate about making a difference in the world and making the world a better place.’

“While soda endorsements and food-on-demand probably won’t change society for the better, recent trends seem to show that influencer marketing is the future that’s coming for us all: one where social media becomes work, the work never stops, and all online identities are commodities to be constantly managed.”

Read the rest.

Photo: Lys

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