Tynan's Anger

Image via WikipediaOne thing I've constantly struggled with in my entry into the media word is the issue of what tone I should take. The debate over tone goes back way beyond the Internet; even in the 1950s, the tone of a paper like The Village Voice was enormously different from that of the New York Times. The difference with the Internet, however, is the web's ability to centralize and level the playing field of all different kinds of tones in the media. I'm not just talking about the differences in tones between publications; I'm also talking about the tone an individual writer takes.

In my case, I have stated multiple times that my goal in life is to be head theater critic of the New York Times. That goal is admittedly preposterous; there may not even be such a position (or a New York Times) by the time I can merit the position. Nonetheless, much of my theater writing on the web sounds very New York Times-like (see: As We Speak, Stoppard and Remnick talking points on Chekhov, The Strangerer). At the same time, I can be crude, snarky, and immature, and embrace the stereotypes of blogs. I took my last blog off Google because I didn't think I regulated my tone enough. I have a personal LiveJournal that I intentionally do not publicize.

In the past, a writer's portfolio would exist in disparate, individuated sources. I'm speaking literally, as in these articles were on distinct pieces of paper in vastly different publications. But now, there's nothing distinguishing the experience of reading Sports Illustrated from reading Kissing Suzy Kolber; they are both read over the same medium, on the same screen (and if you use an RSS reader, the same website). If you're on the internet and into all the talk of personal branding, you know that a good online content producer promotes everything he does on the web on the same centralized platform. But if you're a writer who writes intelligent theater commentary for one source and poop jokes on another, how can you avoid those two worlds coming into conflict?

What centralized online media does on an individual level—or at least what it will eventually have to make us do—is admit the complexities and contradictions that make up an individual content producer. Most people aren't defined by their work, let alone only one facet of their work. By putting oneself and one's work nakedly online, individuals are forcing the world to take all sides of their identity together, rather than just make a judgment based on one source. We take different tones at every stage, setting, and context of our lives. Putting it out in the open on the web is a risky move, but probably one that will be the most rewarding.

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Labels: humanity, media, new media, new york times, the writer, tone, village voice