Media evolution

Past weeks I have had very interesting conversations about evolution of media. They are partly triggered by some very fascinating posts published lately. We’ve focused mainly to the news media, or the area of media that were earlier dominated by the newspapers. The primary questions are following: Is the news media going to be totally fragmented to a market of many “one man and keyboards” or is the media going to be a playground of a big conglomerates? If it is a playground of the big ones, are the players the same as today? Or maybe sombody else? I write few of my arguments here.

Though the rhythm of publishing news is not anymore restricted to any particular reason, I still believe that the news media is consumed because of a need to understand environment around us and because of need to structure our everyday life. Latter referrers to our (old) habits to read morning paper or watch the 9 o’clock news every day. We read the paper we trust and watch those news broadcasts we’ve used to. After the evening news we make a cup of tea, wash our teeth, read some book or maybe go out to give a moment of relief to our dog.

Media consumption is not just reading and learning, it is also way of building identity and giving a structure to the every day life. Media consumers have always needed flexibility, but technology has not been ready for that until past decade or so. Neither consuming nor publishing are not restricted to a certain moment of a day. Consumers choose their moment freely (according to traffic peaks, it seems to be still in the morning and during the lunch breaks). Therefore those who have built a rigid infrastructure and process culture leaning on it are in trouble.

To reach trust among the audience and help them to structure their life, publisher needs to have a ’story’. I define ’story’ as a style that has stable point of view and the fluctuations of quality are not enormous. Publishers have to be predictable and they hae to publish frequently. I partly joked about NYT’s article on bloggers’ exhaustion, but to be honest, keeping up a high quality and good pace is not easy task. Therefore I believe on specialized teams that can keep up with high level of quality and frequent pace of publishing. Team members can also have breaks without audience noticing it; even in the online world people need to rest and have holidays.

The specialized teams answer also challenge of media’s fragmentation. As a generalist newspaper can provide a narrow scratch about a specific issue, these teams will just focus on their area of expertise. They’ll give much deeper understanding on narrow subject. As in the offline world’s star columnists, there will be individual stars, which are successful and popular by themselves.

Environment may look like a magazine publishing today. Traditional news sites may change to be umbrellas for content created by specialized teams owned by totally new owners. Big media conglomerates will exist, but they’re not necessarily the current ones. Those who are too stuck to their current rigid operating culture and processes and will disappear. More flexible ones just change their strategy, acquire companies to cope with new business environment and continue to prosper. Media market will be much flexible than 10-15 years ago, but less fragmented than we still think.

Photos above used under CC license credits to Olivander, Onthetrain and Ninjapoodles.