With the arrival of the past year’s financial results, and the approaching tax deadline, March is when we take stock of The 914’s course and make—or at least resolve to undertake—operational adjustments.
We consider subscribership trends, review campaign performance, line-up A/B message-test results, peruse industry white papers, scrutinize media consumption trends, and overall evaluate our basic strategies and assumptions—all the while adhering to a rigorous prioritization scheme that ensures we are working smart as well as hard.
It may sound like stale crackers but, approached with a can-do attitude, it is a marvelous opportunity to embrace enhanced directionality.
Of course, finding and harnessing said motivation can be challenging.
And we can no longer afford outside help to collect, tabulate and interpret the findings, and then direct, streamline, and deliver the findings.
As caretakers of the moldering fourth estate, our consultant budget has declined right along with the support staff payroll. Needless to say we never had the kind of resources Readers’ Digest did when it was here in Chappaqua—the Digest’s sprawling “Cupola Building” campus had an on-site cafeteria, auto mechanics, tailors, and fire-tenders[1]. A Google campus of its day.
But we did have a mail clerk for the early years. And, until the ’08 collapse, a twice-a-week plant waterer. The “Spit, glue and interns!” motto printed on our ultimate frisbee team equipment bag is more apt today even than when splurged for it back in 2012, when league championship madness was still upon us.
But fortune smiled on us this weekend. At a well-distanced, mask-wearing firepit gathering we ran into a friend of a friend, a veteran of several notable magazine, television, and online news companies. She had occupied many lofty positions—Publisher, Programming Head, Research-and-Development Chief, Director of Brand Leverage—over her forty-year media career and most recently had been the SVP of Corporate Strategy for a podcasting startup that, unfortunately, went belly-up this summer.
Aware of her current situation, we commiserated about the state of the media industry, telling her of our struggles with readership and revenue, and of our trepidation around this year’s review cycle.
We have run into her before and she has never taken much interest in The 914. But this evening she was downright solicitous. She asked after our readership targets, our consumer-facing Universal Selling Proposition (“What’s really going on in Northern Westchester,”) our mission statements for the staff (we have those for several occasions—she was okay with “If you don’t want to write about it, they won’t want to read about it,” “Abnegation is not a mathematical operation,” and “Excess is the hat they wear to the palace of mockery”—but she wrinkled her nose at the spit, glue, and intern line), and then asked us to predict the headline of this year’s report.
We told her we were not there yet but sensed once again it would have to do with driving our content closer to our readers’ front doors.
“Your readers’ front doors? What’s that supposed to mean?”
We explained it is a metaphor for today’s culture of hyper-convenience—home delivery, ultra-relevant product targeting, and one-click purchasing. We need to provide coverage that brings maximum satisfaction with a minimum of work for readers.
“So, you want to tweak your content to make it more accessible? Give me a for-instance.”
We gave the example Westchester Magazine. They are not direct competitors of ours—being more a lifestyle publication, advertiser-driven, and featuring the municipalities of southern and central Westchester[2]—but there is some overlap.
And we do tip our hats to WM’s editorial stratagem—their “Best of Westchester” series featuring eateries (they annually rank more than a dozen categories—Italian, American, Farm-to-Table, Asian, Seafood, etc.) and services (dentists, dermatologists, pet groomers, tutors, yogis) is highly visible and perfectly tailored for the well-heeled, comfort-seeking population of our elite breakfast communities.
“Yeah, you know what that’s called?” she asked.
We asked if she meant “best-of” awards.
“Yes, and more broadly—content that masquerades as audience service but arguably more serves the client advertisers?”
We thought we had a good guess with “trickle-down editorial,” but she shook her head and replied, “Blowgrift.”
“Done right,” she continued, “it’s the most lucrative, low-maintenance editorial hack in modern media. The Olympics, the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Consumer Electronics Show, the Webbies, the Best in Westchester (and the Best in Suffolk and in Bergen and in Fairfax and in Silicon Valley)—it’s all the same. The entity behind each scheme convinces client and public that they are in possession of a uniquely valid, value-determining, news-worthy, quality-judging instrument. And then they basically hoodwink the clients into doing all the work—running around a field, risking one’s life on a snow-covered mountain, making movies, inventing gadgets, cooking pasta primavera, making poodles smell better, whatever.”
That seemed to us like an overly cynical interpretation, at least of the Oscars and the Olympics, and we said as much.
“You’ve heard good things about the ethicality and grounded-ness of IOC board members? Of the institutionally racist Hollywood Foreign Press Association? Or, for that matter, of Westchester Magazine’s self-serving backers?”
We told her we don’t know about WM’s underwriters but have done some investigation into its editorial team and it strikes us that they are pretty down to earth. All appear to live locally and the chief appears to have written a kids’ book series.
“And Henry Kissinger gave the proceeds from his Nobel prize to the children of soldiers lost in the Vietnam War.”
We asked her to connect the dots for us on that statement.
“Henry Kissinger, proud Honour Member of the IOC. You think he performs a lot of meaningful work for the world’s athletes? Or for their fans?”
“Listen,” she continued, “your friends at the magazine, just like Napalm Hank, have a terrific racket. People in Westchester want to eat at good restaurants. People who run Westchester restaurants—whether the decent, the mediocre, or the horrid—tend to suck at marketing. And, so—wondrous to relate—Westchester Magazine steps in with a scheme propelled by their readers’ wallets and the restaurateurs’ labors, and which meantime just happens to channel cash and subscribers into their own magazine-publishing pockets.”
We questioned this statement, observing that, as the award administrator, Westchester Magazine is, at minimum, charged with ensuring quality, and providing editorial attention to the process. The summary articles do not write themselves. And, in the long term, some degree of truth must be maintained, or people will lose trust in the system.
“Yes, one needs to ensure that the Caesar salad doesn’t routinely cause diarrhea and that the dog-groomer doesn’t traumatize the terriers. But, honestly, between that and putting up the Survey Monkey online poll, how many hours will it take one of your brighter interns to set up, administer, and ‘report’ a similar blowgrift? I mean talk about a story that doesn’t require any shoe leather. The restaurants get the word out about the contest—it is they who provide the content, the advertising, they who pay you for the official plaque that then hangs by the concierge bolstering your magazine’s name and . . . don’t you see?! The secret is getting other people to do the work for you—and without letting them realize it’s work!”
We asked her if the word she had used had been blowgrift.
“Stuck with you, did it? Have you heard it before?”
We admitted we had not.
“Good. I mean to own it. Like that scam artist Gladwell and his tipping points and thin slices. You know what a blowjob is?”
We admitted to having heard its definition years ago.
“Well, a guy I knew at college—who naturally ended up a big-time lobbyist—would rant about the inadequacy of the term. Now, he wasn’t using it towards me—mind you. He is and was gay, not that I was interested in him on that level anyhow. We’re still friends on Facebook, actually.”
We nodded.
“Now, you might think his issue was that the action connoted by the term does not—at least necessarily—involve blowing. But it was the other part of the word that got him animated.
The ‘job’ part, we clarified.
“Precisely. ’Why the hell,’ he would say, ‘would you call something you want somebody else to do a job!?’ And his insight was and is profound. You see, his notion was to call it a blowgift. Because people like giving gifts. Because gift-giving puts a person in a position of power and agency. Think on it: is there ever any expectation of the recipient of a paying the gift-giver?”
We started to say not generally in cash but that such interactions can be very complicated—
“No! Otherwise it wouldn’t be a gift. So, that’s where I came up with the term, and then substituting grift for gift. Because it’s patently a swindle—a scam, a grift! And, actually, unlike a blowjob, it does involve blowing, at least in as much as the awards people are blowing smoke up everybody’s skirts and then fleecing them.”
We questioned this blanket assertion. Did she not have to admit that these awards bring a degree of aspiration and motivation to the proceedings? Is it not at least partly to be statue-, plaque- and medal-owners that actors act, athletes athleticize, and that the pizza makers of northern Westchester relentlessly hone their flatbread craft? Does not heightening this sense of competition cause people to step up their games, so to speak? And is that not a positive result for the rest of us?
“Yeah,” she replied. “It’s just terrific to exploit the human instinct for competition. It’s led to so many wonderful outcomes. But of course that is exactly what these blowgrifters want. They want us all to think that unless you run against somebody else at their event, that it doesn’t count. That individual striving is without value unless it is in preparation for a sanctioned, profit-making (for the grifters) event. That the tree that grows in the forest didn’t grow unless they’ve certified it. That the bear that shat in the woods didn’t do so unless they sold tickets to it.”
We pointed out that, so far as we know, bears do not compete over their defecations.
“But do you doubt that—if some Westchester grifter could convince them to, and make money at it—he wouldn’t have it so?”
We ceded the hypothetical point.
“And that’s the thing. Would it add joy or health to the species to have them infected with a spirit of competition about the endeavor? Is it not enough for a tree to grow into a tree all on its own? For a bear to drop a satisfying deuce all on its own? For a heptathlete to be athletic all on her own?”
We asked her what she thought about the fact that the Olympics and the Oscars and The Best of Westchester were nevertheless a chance for the rest of us to celebrate human striving—and if that did not contain a sliver of positivity.
“Well,” she said, “perhaps it does. But compare what we collectively get for having the fastest runner or the most critically acclaimed film or the best seafood restaurant and then consider how much Westchester Magazine or the Hollywood Foreign Press Association or the IOC is benefiting. Are these institutions drawing cash profit? Yes. Are we as a species drawing a cash profit? And what about the majority of the competitors themselves?”
We pointed out that winning an Oscar or an Olympic decathlon surely translates to a cash payday.
“Note that I said ‘the majority’ of the participants. And, again, let me draw your attention back to the awards organization. Are they adding anything significant to the equation? Anything close to the scale of what the scheme’s victims, the competitors, put into it? Every winner stands on the backs of how many runners up? And even the winners—how well do they fare in the real-world long-term? I mean, consider Million Wolde.”
We asked what that was.
“Million is a 5k gold medalist from Ethiopia and, not long ago, a resident of our own Tarrytown! Won at Sydney in 2000. Lovely man. Had some injury setbacks afterwards and came to the U.S. hoping to bring his family over. Worked at the Master’s School down in Dobbs Ferry but apparently they couldn’t find him a livable salary (you can only imagine the business margins on educating children of Westchester parents who find the public schools are wanting) so he moved to the midwest. I heard he was driving an Uber till Covid hit. Now he’s an assistant coach at a small private high school out there.
“Yes, this is how the IOC takes care of a gold-medal winner in a featured track-and-field event. Go ahead and invest your entire young life into being a great runner. We’ll happily make money from your hard work and the medal you might win—paid for by our corporate sponsors—is yours to keep. Of course, if Million had been from a first-world country things might have been a little different.
“But I don’t need to convince you that uncaring grift pervades society—you’re in journalism. And I am not trying to get you do a take-down on the IOC or Westchester Magazine. I’m just pointing out how you can indulge in a little bit of blowgrifting yourself. And I don’t think you should feel badly about it. Consider it a trade-off to subsidize the more noble side of your business. In fact, I even have an idea about how to make it a bit less grifty in your case.”
We started to remind her about our finances and the state of our subscribership—we simply could not right now afford her services—but she cut us off with an emphatic crossing-guard gesture.
“Entirely gratis. Let’s consider it a test campaign for my new company. You’ll of course let me use any results you obtain in my pitching materials going forward and on social media, etcetera?”
We agreed on the spot.
“Good. I may send you a little something to sign just to formalize. Now—are you ready?”
We expressed our sincere thanks even for considering the donation of her expertise.
“You were saying Westchester Magazine has restaurants and pet grooming locked up?
We re-confirmed this for her.
“I bet they don’t do driveway gates!”
She seemed to interpret our speechlessness as awe.
“Yes, idea came to me from my jackass neighbor. A soulless energy trader. How we aren’t shipping these people to Rikers after Texas is beyond me. Anyhow, he built his giant new-construction house in the middle of a wooded plot that hasn’t been farmed, like most of the land up here, in over a hundred years.
“Fortunately, the eyesore is set back a tenth of a mile from the road so you don’t have to see it except half the year when the leaves are down. But what you can’t not see—or ever unsee—is the Italianate monstrosity he just had put up at the end of the driveway. I’m talking golden lions and cherubs and what has to be a family crest in the middle of it—a twenty-thousand-dollar showpiece, easy.
“Now, here’s what you do. You have your intern hop on Google Streetview and go around identifying every house in your subscriber area that has a fancy driveway gate. And then you do some cross-referencing on Facebook and Google to see if you can’t find out who the owners are and maybe just an old-fashioned paper mailing—I mean you’ve got the address right there on Google—and you let them know they can be in the running for the best driveway gate. And I bet you most of those rich, tacky dunderheads will fall right in. They’ll not only sign up for your paper, they’ll jump on their social media and you have yourself a nice piece of blowgrift. And, unlike the board of the IOC or the Screen Actor’s Guild, you one you need not feel like a vampire one bit. Because you’re not exploiting young naifs but rather rich tasteless assholes who absolutely deserve to be exploited for being so unneighborly as to have a feudal gate across their driveway! I mean, didn’t you have some line about documenting excess in one of your mission statements—isn’t that an area you cover, a theme?”
We confessed we do try to hold a light to the sometimes antisocial behaviors of the rich.
“Good. Go forth and chip away at societal injustice, my friend!”
We sincerely thanked her but we pointed out one shortcoming—the fact that people with houses with gated driveways might not want that kind of attention, might not want people assembling in front of their homes to snap pictures and gawk.
She parried this concern with ease, “Then they can opt out. Do you think in this camera-covered world, in this age of mukbangs and selfie sticks that most of our neighbors—that those who think it’s okay to spend more on their driveways than their housecleaners make in a year—will not willingly line up to have their achievement be considered the very best, to be seen not only in-step with the Joneses, but ahead of ‘em?”
And she likewise flicked away our concern that a certain amount of the attention they receive may be snarky or judgmental.
“You think they’ll be put off by sarcastic comments in the comments field or on social media? Do you not know how the Internet works at this point? First of all, if you have a comments field at you website, take it down immediately. What you do is direct people to their favorite social media platforms. You don’t want that liability on your hands for one thing. And, more significantly, on their native pages they are only going to interact with others who see the world exactly as they do. They’ll come away from the experience not only blissfully unruffled by the experience you’ve given them, but downright supported by their similarly feathered friends. You know what Facebook’s Unique Selling Proposition is, don’t you?”
We suggested, “We sell ads, Senator,” but she shook her head.
“’The world as you want to see it.’ Every Facebook page is a garden algorithmically and real-time tailored to the user’s tolerances and intolerances. You think Zukerberg’s grift would still be functioning if he let people of different beliefs mingle? It would be anarchy.”
She then spotted a partner at Fick, Manlove & Snapp and ditched us, but we remain grateful for the encounter. In the past forty-eight hours we have arrived at a bevy of other award extensions—best holiday yard decorations, best yard ornaments, best solar panel installation, and what we expect will be the most lucrative of them all—best lawn.
Please stay tuned for next month’s unveiling of the The 914 Best Homeowner Awards. And, if you know any northern Westchester residents proud of their buildings or grounds, please encourage them to sign up for our free newsletter. We plan on making outdoor plaques available for winners, and nominees, both.
We are also looking for two new interns.
[1] Offices in Readers’ Digest’s Cupola Building not only had windows and doors, but functional fireplaces.
[2] We could conceivably cave on our minimum wordcount but will never stoop to covering Scarsdale