{"id":25374,"date":"2014-04-29T01:35:06","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T05:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=25374"},"modified":"2014-05-22T14:12:51","modified_gmt":"2014-05-22T18:12:51","slug":"never-is-the-next-new-thing-my-bio-and-columbia-spectator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/never-is-the-next-new-thing-my-bio-and-columbia-spectator\/","title":{"rendered":"Never Is the Next New Thing\u2122: My Bio and Columbia Spectator"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve read my blog for a while — or simply looked at my header — you know that my personal (trademarked!) adage<\/a> is “Never Is the Next New Thing\u2122<\/a>.” It started out as a 2010 observation about fashion trends<\/a>. I wrote:<\/p>\n

“I used to say, ‘Never say never’ when it comes to fashion, but I\u2019m taking it to the next level and declaring, ‘Never is the next new thing.’ I\u2019m convinced that the styles that are most hated at first \u2014 the ones that make people say, ‘Never!’ \u2014 are the ones that are most loved once our eyes adjust, with past examples including leggings and various kinds of jeans: skinny, acid-washed, high-waisted, distressed and boyfriend<\/a>.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later on, I realized the rule applied to much more than fashion.\u00a0\u00a0“Never Is the Next New Thing\u2122<\/a>” is a common occurrence in businesses both large and small. In 2012, for instance, I said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ve seen it in my business as well as in the fashion world. People who told me they\u2019d never wear skull jewelry<\/a> or big jewelry<\/a> are buying those pieces from me. My multi-finger ring sets<\/a> that stores totally dismissed in 2008 were copied by Topshop<\/a> this year.\u00a0 The luxury-goods experts who told me my accessibility through social media would ruin my business are now saying no business can exist without a social-media presence.\u00a0 So-called impossible things \u2014 both good and bad \u2014 happen every day in fashion, in business, and in life in general.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A psychological phenomenon known as “fading affect bias” describes the way negative emotions fade quicker from memory than positive emotions. Clay Routledge, an associate professor of psychology at North Dakota State University who studies nostalgia, explained it to me this way:<\/p>\n

“When people experience something that might be perceived as threatening, unpredictable or chaotic, in the immediate aftermath there’s this cognitively conservative response: ‘I don’t like it, it’s inappropriate and unacceptable.’ That seems to fade over time.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I spoke to Clay when I was writing for the Huffington Post<\/a> after Miley Cyrus scandalized many viewers of last August’s MTV Video Music Awards with a provocative performance. When I pointed out to online commenters that previous generations were every bit as scandalized by Elvis, the Rolling Stones and Madonna, the response was, “Yeah, but they’re icons.” They didn’t come out of the womb as icons, though; they were only perceived that way later. I did some research to prove my point and you can read that here<\/a> and here<\/a>. (And I saw with my own eyes that Miley’s career wasn’t ruined<\/a>, as many critics — both professional and armchair — predicted it would be.)<\/p>\n

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Miley Cyrus at Barclays Center earlier this month. Photo by Wendy Brandes.<\/p><\/div>\n

This pattern of alarm followed by acceptance isn’t limited to fashion and music. I’ve experienced it in three different industries, including luxury goods as mentioned above — each time due to the difficulties of integrating the Internet with an existing business. The first Internet-related job I had was in 1995, when I was an editor at the Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition at the time of its launch. (Prior to that I spent three years at Dow Jones News Service, then three more at the print Wall Street Journal.) That was actually quite good. In my recollection, the venture had decent support from the company.\u00a0 The reporters did moan that they were going to have to do twice as much work — a story for the paper and a story for online — but I’m sure they eventually realized it was one story, distributed two ways. I don’t know for sure because I accepted a job at CNN’s financial-news division and worked in television for four years.<\/p>\n

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My late Pekingese dog, Mr. Chubbs, sitting in my seat at CNN on July 4, 1996. Someone was doing a light holiday story on pets.<\/p><\/div>\n

I always wanted to leave business news and get into pop-culture-related journalism, so it seemed like a dream come true when I was hired as managing editor of People Magazine’s website in 1999. Remember what I said Friday about being specific<\/a> when you’re wishing for something? Never wish for a “dream job”! Wish for a “good-dream job” or you could wind up with a “bad-dream job.” It was a nightmare to get the job I wanted and discover that the corporate culture was inhospitable to anyone it hired to do that job.\u00a0 I had been warned that the environment might be bad because the president and chief executive officer of Time Inc. — the owner of People — had once described the Internet operations there as a “black hole.” But that was in 1995<\/a> and surely things had changed, I thought. Wrong! The online editions of the magazines were separate operations from the magazines themselves. I didn’t report to the managing editor of People Magazine but to a revolving cast of characters that came through whatever our separate department was called at the moment. Because of that, People Magazine viewed People.com as competition that would cannibalize the print readership, rather than a way to break stories and expand upon magazine content. I had to beg for scraps of content. The most memorable experience was when John F. Kennedy Jr.; his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy; and her sister, Lauren Bessette were killed in a private-plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard on July 16, 1999. I was in Los Angeles at the time, coordinating breaking-news coverage for the website by email and phone. I asked a magazine editor to use some information from a story that had been submitted by a magazine reporter, and was told no, because it might hold as an exclusive for the magazine. This was happening on a Saturday. The magazine didn’t go to print till the following week. I was amazed. It was the biggest story in the world at that moment — everyone was covering it, including the 24-hour news networks like my old stomping grounds of CNN. What tiny factoid was still going to be exclusive to People nearly a week later when the magazine came out?<\/p>\n

It didn’t matter much in the end because not that many readers could access People.com. Right before I took the job, someone licensed People.com’s content to AOL to bring in some revenue. If you typed “People.com” to your browser, you would get a notice saying that you could see the content only if you (a) subscribed to the magazine or (b) subscribed to AOL.<\/p>\n

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My hiring was announced in the February 1, 1999, issue of People with the worst picture of me ever taken. Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall were on the cover.<\/p><\/div>\n

High-speed broadband Internet connections would become widely available in a few years, but at the time we were still using dial-up. If you subscribed to AOL, you got a disk via snail mail. This one from 1999 is being sold on eBay right now.<\/p>\n

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Click to buy this antique on eBay for $12.99.<\/p><\/div>\n

You would install the AOL software and then use it to get online via a modem and a phone line. This is what connecting sounded like, for those of you who didn’t live through it.<\/p>\n