Pulp For New Media

As an addendum to my post below, I wanted to give my fellow pulpsters a New Years Eve thought or twenty as they contemplate how they are going to jump into the wide weird world of web content. I call my blog Pulp 2.0 because I truly see the internet as a refinement of the pulp publishing model. While you may choose to disagree with me (at your peril) , there are lessons we can all learn from pulp. Many of those lessons have already been applied to other media like TV and radio before it.

So here they are:

Volume:

• Pulp (just like new media) needs a lot of content. You can't just produce one "Home run" and sit back. You must have a lot of base hits to win the game.
  

• That means that the pulp must be easily produced and/or acquired.

• It also means the flow of it must be constant. People are counting on it just like they count on their new DVDs every Tuesday; their new comics every Wednesday; and their new Magazines every Thursday. Pulp must be reliable that way.

• It also means that pulp (and Pulp 2.0) must be prescient and be constantly looking to the future to spot trends and "the next big thing."
  

Marketability:

• Pulp must be easily "sold" to the consumer. It's so high concept you can pitch it in less than 30 words and the consumer "gets it" right away. Ideally you can "sell it" with just the "cover."
  

• Pulp must have an immediate appeal to its audience. It's not complicated or at least the sophistication doesn't show.
  

• Pulp must be translatable from one media to another without losing its core appeal.

Diversity:

• Pulp requires a variety of genres delivered in a variety of ways to satisfy a variety of audiences.

Quality:

• It must be so crafted as to be utterly seamless in its simplicity and solidity. It can't be good one month (or episode) and entirely different (and crappy) the next.
  

• It must be coherent and consistent within its world. As Lee Goldberg says,"It must have a franchise." (CSI - every week you know what you are going to get)

• It must have style, and a point-of-view.

This all runs parallel to my NewPulp declaration, but these are all things that pulp did (does) well, and can easily be adopted by new Media creators for Pulp2.0.

The internet is not about big (the way theatrical movies are big) .
It's about small (short?) and consistent (every week? Update in my email box or RSS Reader?) and most of all, entertaining.