Oh what a relief. Just when I think that my thesis (that thanks to blogs & new media there is less need for print & for the new start up the barrier to entry is now gone) is way off track and that my line of thinking is bunk...along comes BoSacks to reinvigorate me. His October 2009 Publishing Executive Magazine article “Do We Still Really Need Publishers?” is the thread to my thesis needle.
So, do we really need print publishers? I think not. What we need is someone to come up with the business model that makes us money doing what we do best, facilitating the flow of information & creating great reading experiences. Skilled journalists are taking over the blogosphere, they may even band together to form multi-blog media platforms and create a new media business model. Oh wait, that’s already happening. Huffington Post being the prime example of a multi-blog media platform, but other print veterans have struck out online with success like Om Malik...and there are others.
At Blogworld 2009 held Oct. 15-17, K T Cat at The Scratching Post put big media in its place, telling CNN’s Don Lemon that “you don’t know enough to be interesting or of use to me...you can’t compete with us [bloggers].” He balked, rightly so, at the idea of working together...why do bloggers need to feed big media sources in the spirit of community? Why do their footwork, and job, for them? Why when we can source our own information online that is customized to our own personal interests? Individually we harness the power to dig deeper than big media into any issue we want to know more about.
Yes BoSacks hit upon a nerve ending — the ending being the dissipation of mass media and the birth of personal media.
I sat at the Publishing Business Conference & Expo this spring and listened to panelists advise magazine professionals to conserve, to do more with the staff they had, to cross-train them and while they were at it make them responsible for managing all things digital — as if managing print was only half a job.
I realized, hey I’m a freelancer and at best that’s all I might ever be for these big media publications. Surely this doesn’t sound like a call to action to hire fresh blood — digitally minded fresh blood at that. So where does this leave me and others like me?
Well, to forge one’s own path online, that’s where. When I went to the Online News Association conference held October 2009 this sentiment was alive and well among journalists trying to figure out what to do next. Reinvent Yourself Online was a core theme and ONA was happy to give us the entrepreneurial and digital guidance we sought.
BoSacks takes pause to consider writers engaging their audience directly using digital means to self-publish, are missing two components: editorial and art department staff. But I say not necessarily true. There are those in media who have diversified their skills for one reason or another and even if they haven’t worn more than one media hat, they can likely compensate through the connections they’ve made along the way.
I think displaced journalists are more than skilled and more than willing to meet their audience head on. And when big media, or trailblazing bloggers or the kid next door figure out a sustainable revenue model, the future of journalism and publishing will be in our own hands.
So KTCat and BoSacks, I agree. We don’t really need big media. We don’t need a “My platform is bigger than yours” mentality (which is literally how Lemmon responded to KTCat’s comments). Your platform might be bigger, but will it really matter if its just background noise?
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