Artistic newspapers have a hard life. The recent dismissal of 6 of the 14 employees ofStars evidenced by this. The landscape of this type of journalism has changed a lot in recent years.
And at the heart of this transformation, there is the proliferation of these digital platforms which, nourished by one or two people installed in a basement, publish at a frightening rate of “news” which emanates essentially social networks, press releases or certain major media.
“These sites obviously have an impact on artistic newspapers,” says Sébastien Charlton, coordinator for operations at the Media Studies Center of Laval University. The problem is that it is excessively difficult to quantify. Data that was once published on the sale of paper magazines are no longer available. »»
A few years ago, we saw sites in Quebec like Hollywood PQ or Showbizz.net. More recently, natural tips or I like my eyelashes (which I tried to reach without success) made their entry.
The tactics of some of these sites is as coarse as it is an actor: we create a hyper catchy title, taking care not to reveal the news in order to force us to click on a link.
The text is built in order to repel the “punch” as far as possible so that one can encrust two or three advertisements in “the article”. And when finally we are offered bait, we are entitled to a wet firecracker.
Examples? “Colette Provencher is away from screens: you are told why”. What’s going on with the sympathetic Colette? She takes a few weeks of summer vacation. Well let’s see, you! And we are told that she made this announcement without “spectacular staging or dramatic discourse”. I hope …
“At 60, Dany Turcotte breaks on his future”. In the sixth paragraph, we are told that he will publish a novel this fall. The catch is that we have known this for a long time.
And then there is the category of insignificant news: “Stéphane Rousseau offers a new toy on the water and reveals the images”. Or, “Jean-François Plante swallows a wasp in full recipe to Hello hello ».
You will tell me that certain artistic news was not more brilliant. But there, the art of gossip (expression that Jean-François Brassard, former journalist at Echos stars, hate) takes a whole disembarking. It’s downright wind, emptiness, click machine.
We observe the same phenomenon with the field of sport. There are people who consult this. And the time they devote to that, it’s less time for other media.
Sébastien Charlton, Coordinator for Operations at the Center for Media Studies at Laval University
The new artistic has existed in Quebec since the appearance of the first newspapers. Modern reviewat the beginning of the XXe century was the first to mention “gossip” in its worldly pages. “But the first real artistic newspaper arrived in January 1939 with Radio roundsays the musical historian Sébastien Desrosiers. We are witnessing the birth of a kind of star-system québécois. »
The golden age of Quebec artistic newspapers definitively took place in the 1960s and 1970s with Stars and its many variations (Secrets of the stars, Vedette Journal, Weekly stars). “WhenStars Released a scoop, the others resumed the news, but by putting it in their hand, adds Sébastien Desrosiers. We cannibalize ourselves. »»
So we went from cannibalization to vampirization. For the new platforms that are created, the new artistic is nothing other than a fruit that we tear off from the neighbor’s tree.
What has changed over time is the extreme ease with which we make an artistic new. No need to move or do an interview, a new one takes shape in eight minutes.
If the news is within everyone’s reach, it is that nowadays, personalities who are exposed on social networks become immediately from the flesh to gossip. A simple little sentence in an interview on the radio or on TV can be the subject of a text. And beware of those who sell their property. Candy!
This game, and this is where it becomes interesting, gives rise to a form of absolute control on the part of the stars. Some have understood that by publishing a photo of her and their sweet half on Facebook, they obtain visibility on these sites.
It is a remastered version of the good old method of the 1960s when journalist Edward Rémy was leaving for Acapulco with Michèle Richard, Michel Louvain and Renée Martel and returned with equipment for six editions.
Today’s sites are excellent promotion tools. I think of reality TV shows. It’s very good for them.
Sébastien Charlton, Coordinator for Operations at the Center for Media Studies at Laval University
The other thing I noticed is the benevolence that surrounds most of the time the “news” published on these platforms. It is very often nice. And if that is not, we’re going to look for the side bitch history in social networks. In the past, it was the journalist who was the villain, today it was the citizen.
On this subject, Sébastien Desrosiers wishes to emphasize that magazines and artistic platforms exploit mainly emotion. “It has to come from the inside. When an artist confides, he brings us into his secret garden. It must be emotional, touching, on the edge. In the past, we sought to strike the imagination. Today is the emotion that counts. »»
Sébastien Desrosiers has in mind the funeral where we saw a star photographed before, during and after the ceremony in very intimate moments. “We can no longer show this today. It looks like it is a lack of sensitivity. »»
Indeed, today insensitivity is elsewhere. So elsewhere that we no longer see her.