Less than a month ago
I lamented the demise of the printed version of the British film magazine Total Film.
Today, I heard the news that one of the better-known Italian movie websites, Badtaste.it
, has stopped updating just after reaching twenty years of activity.
I’m not exaggerating if I say this piece of news hits me as hard as the previous one.
For Italian movie nerds, Badtaste was a reference point.
For me, it was a success story: I didn’t know Badtaste when I launched my own cinema news blog, The Director’s Cup, in 2005; I can’t say I was ever a real competitor for AFB (Badtaste’s founder), but we had a mutual appreciation and, at some point, there was a brief possibility of a collaboration with on a brand new project.
I ‘quit the battlefield’ after five years, while Badtaste grew and its crew was able to turn a hobby into a paying job, and navigate the ups and downs of Internet Publishing - even if it meant taking (in my opinion) questionable decisions such as putting the review section behind a paywall.
But, I guess, that’s what had to be done in yesterday’s financial landscape in order to go on. And we know how the publishing situation today has worsened: I’ve lost count of the stories I’ve read about websites that, after SEOing themselves to pieces to please the machines, have been dried up and left for dead by the same search engine(s), who apparently don’t need them anymore because now information can be just made up, out of nothing, with impunity.
We should reflect on how a ‘human first’ principle can be applied to Internet Publishing.
But this is not the time or the place for it. Today I’m here to raise a glass to Badtaste.it, its founders and its authors. May the Force be with you all.