Brill's Content takes reporters to task. But will it sell in Peoria?

by Coury Turczyn

If there are two rules of thumb that are undeniable, they're A) God works in mysterious ways, and B) People hate the media.

According to the most recent national survey of people who answer their phones and don't hang up, the media is to blame for darn near everything—all negativity, all salaciousness, all of our baser instincts. If it weren't for those rapacious reporters who abuse the truth in their quests for personal glory and wealth, this country wouldn't be in the state it is today. We as a people wouldn't be so cynical, so amoral, so stupefied into a state of jaded acceptance.

But here's another reliable rule of thumb: People have always had an interest in garbage, and that interest will always be catered to. If a mass media property chooses not to cover the controversial topic of the day, then people will turn to other information sources that do. This is generally how it's been for about the last 200 years of American journalism. So if you hate the media, you basically hate human nature.

However, the big difference today is in the sheer number of media outlets and the quality of the coverage they provide. In other words, there are a hell of a lot more rags are out there with much lower journalistic standards. In the face of Jerry Springer and his ilk, it's undeniable that producers and editors will sink to new lows to satisfy public demand, no matter how ridiculous or stomach-churning (case in point: Fox TV's ongoing series of "Watch People Get Maimed or Killed!" reality shows). And with such reputable mainstays as CNN, The Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and The New Republic (among others) allowing pieces of fiction to be published or aired as fact, it's no wonder that people universally condemn the media even as they suck it up.

Enter Brill's Content, "The Independent Voice of the Information Age." If ever there were a time for a general readership magazine that watchdogs American media, this would be it. As declared by its editor and publisher, former Court TV magnate Steven Brill, the new magazine's mission is based on the idea "...that consumers of news and information in this Information Age should know how what they watch, read, or log on to is produced, and how much they can rely on it..." Such a goal is an almost startling role reversal—to investigate the investigators, watch the watchers, dog the doggers, etc. Can a member of the media responsibly report on the media itself?

After two issues, Brill's Content answers that question in the positive. It affirms its name with just that—lots of content covering every aspect of media culture today. Women's magazines, web search engines, small town newspapers, PR companies for major corporations, book store chains...they all get a close look in stories that try to reveal the relationships between sources and reporters (as well as advertisers and publishers) and how those interworkings result in stories—good ones and bad ones. In the splashy cover story in the debut issue, dubbed "Pressgate," Brill himself makes a day-by-day dissection of the national media's Lewinsky coverage—and shows how reporters gorged on leaks from Ken Starr's investigation without working very hard to verify them. But the story also opened Brill to criticism himself—he forgot to mention that he contributed to the Democratic party (so much for revealing any possible conflicts of interest). And his skewering of the "sex dress" stories now appears to be a tad embarrassing. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating breakdown of how a media feeding-frenzy occurs.

The second issue's cover story thankfully avoids politics and tackles a media giant: Bill Gates and Microsoft. This time, the story exposes sloppy reporting of a different sort—fluff instead of muckraking. Microsoft's squad of 500 PR commandos is revealed as being integral to the company's success, almost more so than its actual software. By paying hyper-attention to certain reporters, and feeding them both the company line and good dinners, Microsoft's PR machine managed to create for the company an image of being the industry leader even when it wasn't—and to posit Bill Gates as a visionary genius. This is the kind of media manipulation that shapes society on a grand scale—and it's fascinating to see how we've been duped.

Equally interesting are the magazine's tiny revelations of journalistic impropriety. For instance, it reveals that some Internet search engines actually sell links placement—if you think the only ads on Yahoo! are the banners, you're wrong. Fashion magazines like Vogue actually put fake makeup credits for their cover shots in order to curry the favor of advertisers—even when they didn't use the advertiser's products at all. One of The Jerry Springer Show's producers completely faked certain shows with actors instead of real people—and is still on the company payroll to keep his mouth shut.

Reaction to Brill's Content from the mainstream media has been mostly of rejection, revulsion, and chiding. Apparently, reporters don't like to be on the hotseat themselves (reading their evasive replies to questions about their conduct can be amusing). The debut issue's two stories on 60 Minutes—one on the show's Kathleen Willey interview, the other on its infamous Audi report—prompted this response from producer Don Hewitt: "...a media watchdog that is too feeble to find anything other than a 12-year-old bone to dig up is hardly going to win any blue ribbons, let alone a biscuit."

Maybe so, but I'd give it time—in two issues, Brill's Content has presented more food for thought on journalistic issues than a year's worth of trade publications. Unlike most magazine start-ups in recent memory, it knows its mission. (Does anybody know what Bob Guccione, Jr.'s Gear wants to be? Does Guccione?) But can Brill's Content expand its reader base beyond media professionals and media bashers? I'm not sure if the Jerry Springer-watching masses will give a damn whether teen magazines fake their advice column letters, but media junkies should rejoice.