Movie "The Chronicle of the Boat"
I don't know if you have such a reading experience: after the "shining moment" between the pieces of paper, I want to know the author and chat with him, because the author is interesting and fun.
All of them are such an author. After reading the book "Editor Outside the Circle", Ideal Jun very much wanted to catch this uncle. Last time I shared the uncle's unique craft of decades of editing career, today I can't help but share the "critical hit", do the media (whether new or old), report readers and friends, especially can take a look.
Internet search is a drug, clicks are a demon?
Excerpted from [Japanese] Tokuzu Ichi "Outside the Circle Editing"
01 I want to fire all the editors who are online in the newsroom
"How do you find a subject?" and "What do you have to do to target the market segment as much as you do?" "Probably the two biggest questions I hear most often when I'm interviewed. [Laughs]
I want to make a loud declaration here that from the Tokyo Style to the bistro interviews, I'm not interviewing "niches" but "majority.". There should be more residents renting narrow apartments than those who ask well-known architects to design mansions; there should be more people who will pick the lover's hotel next to the national highway than those who choose to stay in luxury hotels on dates; and when they want to renew their stalls after eating, most people will not choose to go to high-end bars, but will go to karaoke taverns. But that's just the way it is.
Tokyo Style
What everyone is doing, why doesn't the media report it? This has been my long-standing question. Is it only to pick things that most people can't do, and only a small group of people have the ability to do as the subject of the report, is it because everyone is doing it and the places they are going to are worthless? Dwarf cut? As mentioned earlier, since I was so uncomfortable with the "system" (or magazine composition) that provoked envy or dissatisfaction, I just wanted to be on the same side as most people. So now the existing media almost won't give me a job. [Laughs]
What's it like to report on "what everybody's doing"? One of the natures is that the interview is easy. I'm not being sarcastic, I'm really saying that. Instead of "things that are hard to find without looking for them," I report on "things that are everywhere." Tavernas, lovers' inns, little suites, there was a whole bunch of them all around us.
So my sources of information are nothing remarkable, I will find things as I walk, friends will tell me the news, people I know while drinking will introduce me... Of course, I will look for clues on the Internet, but that is a step that I will take when I have already found something, and I will not wander aimlessly on the Internet from the beginning. What do you think your search for "interesting places in Tokyo" will jump out? [Laughs]
Left: "HEAVEN all rings to accompany you to visit, Japan in the window of society", Right: "No one buys books, there must be someone to buy"
Even if you find something you care about, if you can easily dig up a lot of information on the Internet, it means that this topic has already been done. Then I just have to read the report, there's no need to interview it.
So, if I become the editor-in-chief of the magazine, I want to fire all the editors who are online in the newsroom. (Laughs) In short, it is not okay to stay in the company during the day, you have to go outside to find the subject matter. Assuming hip-hop coverage as an example, there is no website in Japan that allows us to get a general overview of the current state of the domestic industry, but just go to a record store or nightclub to find dozens of upcoming albums and upcoming performances. The same is true of the exhibition information, which magazine provides it is far less helpful than going to the art museum or art gallery to see the dense posters on the walls and take the leaflets.
From this perspective, the last thing I can understand at the moment is the aggregation website. Isn't that just copying what others have worked so hard to make and sticking together?
My e-mail magazine also introduces people from overseas who I can't interview immediately, but I don't copy and paste other people's reports without permission, which is a matter of course. I will use various means to try to contact me through my personal website or Facebook, and ask the other party to send information after explaining my intentions. On several occasions, in the course of correspondence, I had the opportunity to meet with the other person somewhere abroad.
No matter how to write emails and send messages, they are ignored not less, and there are also smooth processes that end up messing up and not being able to write reports. It's a very hard, inefficient way to do things, but it's only when you do it that you're happy. The joy of writing a story is also particularly strong.
All Tsukiji Ichi, Toyo Kataoka painted
But the joy of summarizing the website is zero, because the writer has not taken any action, just collated and included the lazy bag. They do it for a variety of reasons, such as earning online marketing advertising revenue, but all in all, the website does not feel any "heat". I don't understand, why are there so many writers in that kind of place, through that kind of behavior to consume themselves? If the salary of the editor's work is converted into an hourly wage, it can only be described in two words: miserable. What more can you get if it's not fun?
02 Thinking about the marketing layout by the number of clicks is really the wrong direction
I haven't done a single market research for readers. When I did ROADSIDERS'weekly, I never expected all subscribers to like all the coverage.
Any magazine has a page like "Reader Contributions" at the end of the book, right? That was really disgusting, with radio shows like "I'm always having fun listening!" Mr. Coffee from 'Dawn' is a kind.
First of all, it is a shame to let the reader know that he has been praised. Brutus even removed the entire reader's submission page when it was launched. Besides, most of the reviews that call magazines "so funny" are written on lottery postcards. [Laughs]
Roadside EUROPE – A Chronicle of the Curious World (European) Inner Page, swipe left and right to view: (1) "Amateur Herbarian Walter Potter's Collection of Strange Specimens" ;(2) "Cross Hill" Lithuania, England.
If someone says "it's funny" on Facebook or Twitter, I'll be happy to see it, but I won't add more coverage to it. I certainly don't do reader questionnaires either.
The mass media always like to do so-and-so questionnaires, but the "distance between themselves and readers" measured by this is not true. In short, the questionnaire is about averaging, "the minority obeys the majority", and producing the next report or program based on the largest number of suggestions, but the most interesting thing must be the most boring thing. My reporting was done for the defeated minority.
Email magazines hold "netizen gatherings" once or twice a year, not only in Tokyo, but also in Osaka occasionally, and enthusiastic subscribers come from afar to participate, just drinking together is very happy. However, once a reader said to me: "If you have the spare time to write a large and long reply in facebook, it is better to take that time to read the report carefully." "I was taken aback.
The internet marketing industry determines the success or failure of a website by the number of clicks or likes. But empirically, this judgment is not accurate at all. They just don't have any other material to judge, just like the TV industry only has ratings as a criterion.
Roadsiders' weekly Facebook informs readers every week of what's going on in the current issue, well, it feels like a digital version of a tram car ad. Some reports will be shared by more than a hundred people, and the number of likes will sometimes be thousands, or even far more than ten thousand, but the responses at the bottom will not be more and more.
At first I didn't understand why, and I didn't know what to do. I write in my postscript almost every week: "I look forward to your thoughts." "But no one responded at all. But I came to understand that the people who retweet articles on Facebook or Twitter are not necessarily serious readers.
All build one
Of course, there is an overlap between the forwarder and the serious reader, but the person who really reads it very carefully has a lot of words, or only reads quietly. Recently, I have finally begun to experience this first-hand. There's often a situation where (laughs) so-and-so says, "I'm bound to read your stuff!" I replied: "You subscribed, thank you." The other party smiled and said, "No, I will fix your Facebook!" Just like people who retweet exhibitions and event information and add a sentence of "this must go", most of them will not go. Therefore, thinking about the marketing layout by the number of clicks or likes is really the wrong direction.
According to the editors of the online platforms I know, the decisive point of the online article seems to be "the appeal of the first page to the reader". It is common for articles that are not long but are divided into several pages, but most readers are satisfied with only looking at the first page, and there are many fewer people who will click into the second page, so the writer will pay special attention to the text of the first page.
Listening to him say this, I do think that the online article from the beginning is very much like the "dry goods summary" of "pointing", or all the content is stuffed into the "up" of "starting and turning". Dividing an article into many pages in order to earn clicks results in a vicious circle in which readers are reluctant to read long texts in detail. This is tantamount to putting the cart before the horse, or to say that on the surface the "number of views" has increased, but the reader's satisfaction cannot be reflected in the numbers.
Therefore, neither online magazines nor e-mail magazines should care about the number of clicks, and the goal can only be "to write an article that readers will read to the end". Believe that as long as you keep running, enthusiastic readers will silently follow, although the numbers will not reflect it. Alas, what else can be done but believe. [Laughs]
03 The key to winning or losing is "how many things can be thrown"
There is a saying that everyone's life has a turnaround. Looking at it this way, my first turnaround was probably when I was making Tokyo Style. I bought a camera and started photographing the cramped room, and gradually I was able to focus on the good and good parts of ordinary life. This is completely different from the idea of doing a magazine running at the forefront of popularity, so my vision has also become bigger. I think the second turning point that followed was the launch of an email magazine.
The first thing that changes is the money balance. In the past, I used to live on magazine fees or book royalties, and the cost of interviews was almost always borne by the publisher. After I started an email magazine, it was no longer a company that paid me a fee, but a subscriber who bought me an article or a photo directly... Or that the purchase information is more accurate.
ROADSIDERS'weekly sends four times a month, and the subscription costs 1,000 yen per month. I take money from subscribers, then go somewhere in their place, meet someone, write a report in this form of information, and then feed it back to the subscriber. Subscribers will continue to subscribe when they find it interesting, and I will take the money they paid to go somewhere else. This can be said to be the form of "direct sales of origin", with no intermediary between writers and readers, and a straightforward media. So for me, subscribers to email magazines feel more like "sponsors" and "escorts" than the "readers" of the past.
The real feedback of readers can be seen through social networking sites, which also has a big impact. Every day I was exposed to all kinds of voices: the report was too long to read; there were too many pornographic photos to read on the tram, so I unsubscribed; after two years of consideration, I finally decided to subscribe; I watched the exhibition introduced by the report! ...... In the era of writing in paper magazines, I could only judge the degree of resonance of readers with my articles based on the sales of the single book collected from the serial content. Even if the magazine is a big seller, I don't know if the credit should be attributed to my article or the nude photo of the volume (probably the latter).
"WASABI" Lolita Cute Clothing Store, Matsutani, Taito District (from "Tokyo Right Half")
In other words, there is no excuse for selling. In the era of print media, magazines can not sell well and can still be justified: it is not their own reports that are harmed, but the special edition is too tacky. However, once you run a media that is so consistent with your personal style, the reason for the decrease in subscribers is inevitably on your own. The number of subscribers is equal to sales, and the requirements are very strict, but the "one-on-one" feeling between writers and readers is completely incomparable to the print media era. It's like farmers who originally sold vegetables through agricultural associations, aiming at direct sales in the place of origin, began to sell harvested crops on the Internet or at roadside stalls, and who bought them and what kind of eyes they used to look at the products, the sellers will feel deeply. For creators, there's no greater incentive than that.
If something is interesting, the reader will leave a message to point out where it is interesting, and the mistake will be immediately picked out. No matter in which field, there will be readers who know better than writers, but the media and readers will be indifferent when they are far away. After a month of receiving a reply letter after reading, I probably won't feel anything after reading it, but if you email a magazine, the reaction of the reader will appear on Facebook or Twitter within a few hours after sending it.
Many of roadsiders' weekly subscribers have traveled more extensively and are proficient in various fields than I am, but most of them are camping for day after day. Seeing something that makes you feel funny can't tell yourself, "Let's go see it tomorrow." Anyone who is interested will not want to talk to him specifically. I just take the money for the subscription fee and do it for everyone else.
Lately I've been thinking deeply that's what professionals are all about. For example, anyone who cares about "what they are born for" and "what happens after death" can't work if they keep thinking about it every day. So philosophers spend their whole lives thinking about problems in place of those people, and then organize their ideas into books that they can buy and read. Some people think deeply instead of everyone, some people travel far instead of everyone, some people exhaustively study food... And it is their labor that is rewarded. After starting to do email magazines, this feeling became very strong.
What is the difference between moving a platform that publishes a story from print to the web? I thought about it and thought that "no limit on quantity" should be the biggest difference.
To write a one-page story in a magazine, you must first consider the length of 1500 words and 3 pictures. The length of the article has been decided in advance, so how to organize the content has become the main point of work. However, online media basically have no space limit, and if you want to write 1500 words or 15000 words, there will be no problem of increasing the number of pages and increasing printing costs. The key to victory or defeat is no longer "the ability to coordinate and organize", but "how many things can be thrown". And not only text and pictures, but also audio files or videos. It's a fairly fresh thrill for people who always work in print media.
Republic of China produced "Outside the Circle Editor", the monologue of the rope was photographed
It is often said that when writing an article, it is necessary to consider the beginning and closing of the article. That is, how to start, how to expand and lead to conclusions, so that you can complete an article.
Writing novels, essays, and other written works is difficult to write without a succession, but I write reports, not works. The article is slightly more complete, but the quality of the information tucked in is more important. Therefore, after I started writing on the internet platform, the part I paid attention to was no longer "how well organized", but "whether there is a way to convey to the reader what I see and hear correctly and without omission".
Books have specifications such as magazines, monographs, and libraries, but the content of the online platform will be different in format according to the computer, mobile phone and other devices used by readers, which is a very important distinction. Depending on the screen size, the number of single lines of text varies, and the speed at which it is downloaded or read in streaming varies. The reading environment corresponding to the online platform is so diverse, is there really a benchmark of "appropriate text volume"? I do not know. Some people may think that "there are so many words that are easy to read on the Internet platform", but I think no one can say this kind of thing accurately.
Not only the way the article is written, but I think the way photos are taken has also changed. In the past, when I was doing two-page reports, I would have 1 main photo and 3 photos to illustrate, so I would try to convey as much information as possible within the limited number of photos. That said, I'll bother to take a little more of the main photo.
However, what happens if a report can put 100 photos instead of 4 photos? It is no longer about "which photo is the visual center of gravity", but about shooting from as many angles as possible, presenting various details, and creating an image with their collection - this trend will gradually form. Screens as small as mobile phones must be taken care of, but the format of web content cannot be set at the size of the picture displayed on the page like a physical magazine. So, instead of taking a decisive picture, it's better to accumulate pictures from various angles and create a whole, well, Cubist structure.
Left: "The Old Man Who Lives Alone in Style" (Chikuma Shobo, 2013),
Right: "The Taste of Water-Mixed Spirits in Heaven: The Charm of Tokyo Taverns" (Hirosedo Publishing, 2010)
Many of my recent books were serialized online before they were published, such as "Old Man Who Lives Alone, Style," an online magazine run by Chikuma Shobo, and "The Taste of Water-Mixed Spirits in Heaven: A Drunken Chaos in Tokyo Taverns," which was serialized on my blog in partnership with the editors of Hiromado Publishing. Both are stories centered on extremely long interviews, and if they were originally serialized in paper magazines, the content would have become very different.
Even if you visit for hours and listen to many interesting things, you still have to make trade-offs for the length limit of articles on the print media and organize them into your own articles. But I think that the interest of some people or places can only be presented through the accumulation of details, such as the usual way of speaking, the content of the conversation that deviates from the theme, and so on. If you write in your own article, "There is such a person, his attitude to life is very interesting...", it will only be written as a "somewhat awesome story", but if even the content of the dialogue and the tone of the other party are directly reproduced, it can convey the depth of a person or the atmosphere of the venue. Although it will also directly lead to the form of "overdone and cannot be easily read".
That's a feature unique to the web. There is no advantage or disadvantage between the Internet and the print media, and we can only slowly seek the proper use of the two. When I write about cases sent to me instead of my own e-mail magazines, I have to think about different ways of using them, writing them, and taking pictures, which is quite difficult to operate.
👇 Wild Editor's Out-of-Circle Critical Hit