Media guru, NPR personality, and Advertising Age critic Bob Garfield tells Chris Kenneally why he had to invent a publishing company after some 50 publishers declined to put out his latest book, The Chaos Scenario, according to the principles of “Listenomics” – “not talking to the crowd from atop the mount, but by dealing with [the] audience as participants, stakeholders, fellow travelers.”
Among its innovations, The Chaos Scenario (Stielstra Publishing) features a “crowd-sourced” book jacket assembled by crowdSPRING as well as an online-only 13th chapter. “Basically, publishing hasn’t changed dramatically in the last century,” Garfield explains, “and what I’m proposing is a dramatic change, and who doesn’t resist dramatic change?” For most of the book, Garfield focuses his attention on the “chaos scenario” that he sees now engulfing all forms of advertising-supported media, from newspapers to broadcast TV.
“We’re not at the beginning of the collapse, we’re in sort of the middle of the collapse,” he says.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed