32 The New Ecology
acquisitions from the 1970s onwards had resulted in a Big Five and
Big Six in music and book publishing, respectively, that were already
affecting consumer patterns. This is not to deny the transformative
effects of Apple and Amazon, which have been profound, but it does
draw attention to the more complex, probabilistic rather than deterministic relations between production networks and consumers.
Apple saw an opportunity to enter a media market – music – and
change it considerably, as did Amazon in another – books. Where
neither has succeeded as they intended is with the distribution of news
and journalism, which draws attention to some of the complexities of
this particular media ecology.
In World Without Mind, Franklin Foer cites a quotation from Ben
Bagdikian regarding the operation of newspapers monopolies from
2001: “By the early twenty-first century, literally 99.9 percent of contemporary daily papers are a monopoly in their own city.”
83
Foer then
goes on observe just how many of these have since perished since Bagdikian statement, with print circulation down from nearly 60 million
in 1994 to 35 million by 2017. In just over 20 years, the print industry
for newspapers has been hollowed out while that for magazines, while
delayed by a half-decade, has also begun to dwindle rapidly. Many of
the factors contributing to this decline – not all of which are due to technological disruption – will be considered in the next chapter, but at this
stage, we shall consider one ill-advised intervention on the part of Apple
that demonstrates the limitations of simplistic notions of technological
determination.
When the iPad was launched in 2010, Apple heralded it as a device
that would be especially helpful to publishers. Steve Jobs referred to the
first iPad as the “iPod for books”
84
, and Celeste Martin and Jonathan
Aitken have observed how the device, as one of the second generation of e-readers, allowed for a rethinking of how reading could take
place on an electronic device, offering a “permeable” space that shared
the interconnectedness of computers but also preserved some of the
contemplative modes of traditional reading.
85
A larger screen – even
prior to the retina display introduced with the fourth iteration of the
device – meant that it was more suited for reading than the iPhone, and
with the launch of iOS 5 in 2012, Apple also tried to leverage these
additional qualities for newspapers and magazines with the release of
Newsstand. In tandem with iTunes, this was intended to woo publishers to the iPad, with Apple and Jobs intending to do for the news
and magazine publishing industry what it had done for music (though
not necessarily for books). In its announcement for Newsstand, Apple
remarked that the app – a “new way to purchase and organize your
newspaper and magazine subscriptions” – was intended as a simple,
skeumorphic interface that would display covers of titles as though
on a physical newsstand and update subscriptions automatically.
86
acquisitions from the 1970s onwards had resulted in a Big Five and
Big Six in music and book publishing, respectively, that were already
affecting consumer patterns. This is not to deny the transformative
effects of Apple and Amazon, which have been profound, but it does
draw attention to the more complex, probabilistic rather than deterministic relations between production networks and consumers.
Apple saw an opportunity to enter a media market – music – and
change it considerably, as did Amazon in another – books. Where
neither has succeeded as they intended is with the distribution of news
and journalism, which draws attention to some of the complexities of
this particular media ecology.
In World Without Mind, Franklin Foer cites a quotation from Ben
Bagdikian regarding the operation of newspapers monopolies from
2001: “By the early twenty-first century, literally 99.9 percent of contemporary daily papers are a monopoly in their own city.”
83
Foer then
goes on observe just how many of these have since perished since Bagdikian statement, with print circulation down from nearly 60 million
in 1994 to 35 million by 2017. In just over 20 years, the print industry
for newspapers has been hollowed out while that for magazines, while
delayed by a half-decade, has also begun to dwindle rapidly. Many of
the factors contributing to this decline – not all of which are due to technological disruption – will be considered in the next chapter, but at this
stage, we shall consider one ill-advised intervention on the part of Apple
that demonstrates the limitations of simplistic notions of technological
determination.
When the iPad was launched in 2010, Apple heralded it as a device
that would be especially helpful to publishers. Steve Jobs referred to the
first iPad as the “iPod for books”
84
, and Celeste Martin and Jonathan
Aitken have observed how the device, as one of the second generation of e-readers, allowed for a rethinking of how reading could take
place on an electronic device, offering a “permeable” space that shared
the interconnectedness of computers but also preserved some of the
contemplative modes of traditional reading.
85
A larger screen – even
prior to the retina display introduced with the fourth iteration of the
device – meant that it was more suited for reading than the iPhone, and
with the launch of iOS 5 in 2012, Apple also tried to leverage these
additional qualities for newspapers and magazines with the release of
Newsstand. In tandem with iTunes, this was intended to woo publishers to the iPad, with Apple and Jobs intending to do for the news
and magazine publishing industry what it had done for music (though
not necessarily for books). In its announcement for Newsstand, Apple
remarked that the app – a “new way to purchase and organize your
newspaper and magazine subscriptions” – was intended as a simple,
skeumorphic interface that would display covers of titles as though
on a physical newsstand and update subscriptions automatically.
86