Tyler Brûlé, journalist and founder of Wallpaper*, provides a fresh weekly take on every aspect of the media world. A mix of feature interviews, authored films, and behind-the-scenes insight: from media manipulation to musical editors' chairs in New York.
Interview: Tyler Brûlé:
BBC: Wallpaper* focused very much on design, where does your interest in commenting on the media come from?
Tyler Brûlé: I come from a background of reportage journalism and it's a genre that I particularly admire and respect. Before I launched Wallpaper* I worked as a reporter both in television and as a freelance journalist, covering stories as diverse as the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the rebuilding of Beirut, to spending time with the Arafats in their compound in Tunis. Perhaps I'm best known for surviving an ambush in Kabul in 1994 where I was shot twice.
At Wallpaper*, we regularly ran pieces that weren't design stories per se but which we thought were interesting in their own right. We ran the first story on Al-Jazeera for example, or we would trace the story of the JC Decaux advertising billboard empire. I think that nowadays the media and design are inextricably linked and that perhaps it's somewhat pedantic trying to separate the two. Good, elegant design is as important as intelligent and judicious editing.
BBC: You have said that The Desk will have a global focus – what do you think the British media can learn from the international press – and vice versa?
TB: On many issues, the British press are internationally acclaimed and admired for their pragmatism and objectivity. But we can also be accused of having quite a narrow and domestic agenda. The Desk wants to capitalise on the fact that London is arguably the most important media centre in the world – home to Arabic newspapers in exile, the major US TV networks and a magnet for graphic design talent from around the world. All too often we forget what makes the UK an interesting media market to dynamic is the diversity founded in all sectors of media.
BBC: The last time we had a show focussing on the media on British Television was in 1991. How have things changed since then?
TB: The medium itself has changed. In 1991 most people lived on a diet of four terrestrial channels. Today Freeview is practically the new standard for most homes and Sky has become part of the establishment. At the same time there are myriad other delivery systems which are about to change people's viewing habits. So TV alone is an ongoing media story in its own right.
BBC: What do you see as the media trends for 2005?
TB: The big trends for 2005 will be an ongoing debate about the way we cover conflicts like Iraq - is the embedded journalist here to stay?
The influence that broadband will have on both terrestrial and satellite broadcasters. The rise of free-to-market premium print brands be they newspaper or magazines.
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