How to gin up a trend. Not content with having blown the lid off the whole computer-geeks-vs-clueless-users story, today the Times has this shocker for us: there are women making money in the sex industry (print-version title, "Sex Industry Is No Longer Men's World")!

Experts say demand by women—both heterosexual and lesbian—is driving the growth of all sorts of sex-related ventures, from stores, catalogs and sex toy companies to adult Web sites, pornographic films and cable television shows. At the same time, many women, they say, see the sex industry as a legitimate place to make a living.

And this after another hard-hitting A1 report just yesterday exposing the whole low-carb diet thing: "Low-Carb Boom Isn't Just for Dieters Anymore." My head is spinning.

Maybe you'd like to be like professional Times reporter Mireya Navarro, and make a flashy new trend yourself out of just-a-bunch-of-stuff-that's-actually-kind-of-been-happening-for-a-while-already. It's easy and fun! Here are some pointers:

• Take all your "evidence" from people who have a profit motive in hyping the trend. From the start of the piece, which introduces us to a couple of aspiring grrrl pornographers, Ms. Navarro never lets this rule out of her sights.
• Hitch your wagon to a press kit. [Closely related to the first rule.] You might have seen some godforsaken local TV news outlet run a "report" this past week on Passion Parties, the sex-toy version of the Tupperware gathering. In all likelihood, that report was fed to the station by a public relations outfit, an arrangement that spares the station the expense of hiring and retaining actual reporters. Though she's a good deal more subtle about it, odds are that Ms. Navarro was also the recipient, from Passion Parties and probably elsewhere, of some handy PR materials that helped her flesh out her trend.
• Present statistics in isolation. Remember, context is your enemy. "Surveys by Nielsen/NetRatings, which measures Internet audiences, have found that women account for more than a quarter of all visitors to sites with adult content, with more than 10 million women logging on to such sites in December alone. ComScore Media Metrix, an Internet research firm, has found even higher female demand for adult sites—42 percent of all visitors in January—with the highest rates among women ages 18 to 34." Notice that neither of these sentences actually support the notion of a trend, since they offer no baselines for comparison, either with earlier female behavior on sex sites or with general tendencies in Internet usage. But they sure sound impressive, don't they? Ten million, that's a big number!
• In trend reporting, one = many. [Closely related to the rule above.] "Many new sexual entrepreneurs say they are filling a void, supplying female-oriented products that did not exist before. Last month, Robin Adams, 32, and Micole Taggart, 29, published the first issue of 'Sweet Action,' a pornographic magazine billed as 'the official guide for the boy-crazy gal.'" Well, that's the only example the article gives of a "female-oriented product that did not exist before," (and there's the little matter of Playgirl, isn't there?), but look how just saying many gives the impression of many-ness anyhow!
• The Internet: Friend of the trend! Man, that Internet thing is all the rage, isn't it? And Ms. Navarro has a killer move here for us: when you have to gesture toward the common-sense rebuttal to your new trend, dazzle 'em by tossing in the Internet! That way they won't notice that you're talking pure horseshit. "While women have long been involved in the sex industry as providers and consumers, their participation now has become more of an economic phenomenon, largely because of the Internet. In fact, experts say, the Internet has been a major factor in unleashing women's interest in all things sexual." See, women have "long been involved" economically in the sex trade (at least I assume that "providing" and "consuming" are economic activities), but now it's all somehow more economic, all thanks to that Internet. Ooh, see, Internet ... phenomenon ... sexxxy ...
• Remember, explanation is for suckers. Your job as a trend reporter is to imply, without saying anything that you could be pinned down on. Are women buying more porn now than before, or producing/distributing/selling more of it? Or all of those? Have new entrepreneurial avenues somehow opened up for women in the industry? Are women changing their porn-consuming behavior (if they are) because they have more opportunities to buy porn from women, or to buy female-targeted porn, or because the availability of online porn is changing men and women's behavior both? Ms. Navarro is too smart a trend reporter to let those questions rear their heads. Maybe women are just somehow hornier than they used to be! That'd be cool, huh?

OK, I think that's enough to get you started. One more quick guideline: if you want to make A1, your best bet is to hype a trend that'll remind readers that they're consumers first and foremost. A trend just isn't trendy if it doesn't stand a chance of moving some product, or at least of creating some anxiety that'll move some product. Now get out there and find out why cats are the latest thing in pets, or something!

posted by michael  7:07:31 PM  
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When it wants to, the Times is capable of putting on a full-court press that justifies its position as the pre-eminent national newspaper. The Times has wanted to in the case of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and his nuclear proliferation network. Numerous hands—David Rohde in Pakistan is one, Raymond Bonner reporting from Malaysia another—have been at this story over the last several weeks, since the pathetic little shadow drama that played out between Khan and Pervez Musharraf, but I'll let yesterday's piece by Craig S. Smith ("Roots of Pakistan Atomic Scandal Traced to Europe") stand in for all. Smith writes that although Khan "has been demoized in the West for selling atomic secrets and equipment around the world, ... the trade began in Europe, not Islamabad," and he offers an account of how the European uranium enrichment industry conspired to flout the non-proliferation regime:

Many of the names that have turned up among lists of suppliers and middlemen who fed equipment, materials and knowledge to nuclear programs in Pakistan and other aspiring nuclear nations are well-known players in Europe's uranium enrichment industry, a critical part of many nuclear weapons programs. Some have been convicted of illegal exports before.

The proliferation has its roots in Europe's own postwar eagerness for nuclear independence from the United States and its lax security over potentially lethal technology. It was abetted, critics say, by competition within Europe for lucrative contracts to bolster state-supported nuclear industries. Even as their own intelligence services warned that Pakistan could not be trusted, some European governments continued to help Pakistan's nuclear program.

Really an exemplary piece of reporting, factual and well contextualized. It's nice to have something like this to praise the Times for—I just wish the paper's national political desk had anything like the reportorial vigor evidenced on the international side.

posted by michael  9:52:47 AM  
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