Publishers are pivoting toward users and away from
advertisers and investors as
their main source of financial support. The business model that depended on
advertising to support journalism is moribund and nearly dead. The automated
buying and selling of advertising is controlled by the duopoly of Google and
Facebook, which have more and better data about news publishers' users than the
publishers' themselves. Publishers have no way to compete with that dominance
of programming and targeting of ads. It's time to burn the ships and not look
back.
And yet, as anyone who has ever watched a cooking
competition on TV, or posted a photograph of their
favourite dish on social media,
knows very well, before food ever passes into our mouths, we often devour it
first with our eyes. Isn’t
this why the home-cooks on Master Chef are judged not just on culinary
technique, but also on plating skills? Not just on how their food tastes, but
also on how it looks? And don’t we all know what it feels like to salivate at
the mere sight of a
delicious bowl of curry laksa, or chilli crab? All of which gives a whole new
meaning to the words, watching
what we eat!
Increasingly, perhaps now more than ever, people
are realising that we eat not just with our mouths, but also
with our eyes. Involving not just our sense of taste, but also our senses of
sight and smell, of touch and hearing as well. But if this is true of the food
that fills my belly, what about the kind that satisfies my soul? With which
part of myself do I eat spiritual food?
This, I believe, is the crucially important question that our Mass readings
invite us to ponder today
