Media

The Year the Media Died

An old friend shared this link with me last week — an incredibly ambitious undertaking, extremely well executed: a parody of Don Maclean’s “American Pie,” recast to survey the demise of the old media at the hands of the internet and Google.

The piece is cute. It tests your sensibilities lyrically from time to time, but a tip of the hat to “lmcduff” for writing and producing in a single day!

Now let’s stop crying about the end of print journalism, the end of the big agency team, the end of all the perks (my favorite: tickets to see Bobby Short at The Carlyle). It’s like lamenting the end of the horseless carriage for God’s sake. Last time I checked we still had horses and ponies around and people spending plenty of money to watch them play polo, and take left turns around grass and dirt tracks for big prize money.

The media have changed. How do we protect the message? How do we answer my brother David’s question: “Who’s going to staff a bureau in the dark corners of the world so that we can get reliable news when things start blowing up in the Pashtun provinces?”

We do so by creating value, and choosing to bring that value to markets willing to spend to support it. The mistake failing media outlets are making is this: they believe that their key asset is their readership. Wrong again, Watson! Their key asset is their staff, their writers, and their ability to find and produce the right story at the right time with the right insight. Readers will find the media source with the best writers… and the eyeballs will turn over — and over. Readers will be loyal to you if you are loyal to your bureau chiefs, your editors, your stringers. Find your niche and protect it!

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