What Happens if the Old Media Dies Before the New Media Learns to Walk?
By Tom Foremski - September 9, 2008
For nearly four years I've been warning about huge changes in the media world and why the old media can't make it into the new media world.
There is an American expression that I love to use: "You can't get there from here." It seemingly doesn't make sense but it makes perfect sense in this context.
You can't get there from here. When I left the Financial Times four years ago to become the first journalist to leave a top newspaper job to become a "journalist blogger" I could see the economic model of the old world, and the new economics of new media.
I could see that pageviews and clicks could barely support me--a chap with a laptop and a cell phone. How could the economics of the new world support the legacy cost structure of the old, with its office buildings, printing presses, pension plans, etc?
I could also see that the transition of the media's business model would be tremendously disruptive. And that this disruption would accelerate over the the next few years, as indeed has happened.
I asked then, and I ask now: What happens if the old media dies before the new media learns to walk?
What will happen to journalism and to the hundreds of years of best practices created since newspapers were born from Guthenberg's moveable type machine, if old media can't transition to the online Movable Type of the new media world?
And it won't be able to transition. Because the economics of new media -- pageviews and clicks -- can't support it.
New media is defined by a machine-based economic model. It is cheaper to plug in a bank of servers and run software to publish content than it is to hire editors, manage journalists, and carry all the other employee related expenses of healthcare, pensions, offices, etc.
Google is machine-based media. It uses servers and software to harvest and publish content and then sell advertising around it.
Google and other machine-based media companies such as Yahoo, AOL, etc can cover their costs by selling ads cheaply. And that's what sets the price of online advertising--machine-based media companies.
Media companies that require people to generate their content can't compete. Their costs are far higher than machine-based media companies--yet they have to sell their online advertising at the same rates.
That's why "You can't get there from here."
What happens if the old media dies before the new media learns to walk?
It won't be pretty. It'll be ugly and we'll have to relearn our best practices. And there will be considerable damage done to society.
But it is not just media companies that are at the center of this disruptive tempest. Many new startup companies are in the cross hairs too.
September 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comment | Category: MediaWatch | Subscribe to SVW
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Comments (8)
You're right here Tom and on the jump post over at ZD. It's up to us who've been in both new and old media and show a few years to whack some journalism into our innocent digital compatriots before the old media - and a key check and balance on the exercise of power - implodes.
Buy them a rental of "All the President's Men" or twitter them the next "Newsroom U.S.A" is on; drop "The Best and the Brightest" on their laptops.
If you want to live in a relatively free society then journalism isn't optional.
On the flip side as a microISV I charge for my software; as a startup, my web app will be subscription based. There's not enough flat surfaces in the world to host all the ads the advertising revenue model requires to work. Developers need to stop drinking the GYM cool-aid and get back to getting paid for solving real problems for real people, not eyeball-collecting.
Posted: September 9, 2008 5:35 PM
Bob, yes, we can see things a little more clearly having lived in both worlds but I'm not sure that this gives us any advantages, which is unfortunate :-)
Posted: September 9, 2008 7:15 PM
One good thing will come of this: Republicans will not be able to attack the established media in order to misdirect the public from their own failings.
Neither will Democrats.
Nevertheless, the fourth estate must and will adapt to the new century and new media (New Century/Media?).
We as a species are too smart to not react to our power to communicate with one another to not prevent ourselves from becoming collectively stupid.
We will find a way to promote and check facts, establish rules of the road for the new media, while insuring the freedom of the press, and yes, even make a living while doing so.
And if we fail to do this, in the new media, perhaps the old media will reinvent itself to fill in the void. After all, Nature abhors a vacuum. Even a vacuum of good communication.
Posted: September 15, 2008 10:34 AM
"Change is the only constant thing in the world", every day , every hour we are dealing with changes. The world has been surviving for more than 2000 years now and the changes that transpired from day 1 to present is so greatly overwhelming, one might even wonder how human had survived.
Technology is indeed continuously altering our life, take for example the "tourist photographers" who lost their job due to the coming out of modern and affordable digicams. But, then they had survived, some may not and just went down to the spiral limbo of "forgetting what used-to-be latest". But still, they pick up the pieces and continued living - life...
So, what then will happen if the old media dies before the new media learns to walk?
We cannot and should not underestimate the power of the new generation to carry on the same "staying power" we had shown when we dealt with the same fear of the past generation.
I am more than certain that the human's ability to survive, our creativity, our flexibility, our ingenuity will still prevail above this overpowering technology!
That's us! Humans! And, I am proud to be one! SEO Test
Posted: November 13, 2008 7:09 PM
If you want to live in a relatively free society then journalism isn't optional.
Posted: February 8, 2009 6:26 PM
There's not enough flat surfaces in the world to host all the ads the advertising revenue model requires to work.
Posted: February 8, 2009 6:37 PM
I believe the world will always need professional journalists, it's not even a matter of democracy - EVERY type of government needs journalists, the difference perhaps is in WHO pays them. Mass media are a great tool to keep people under control, and journalists are an integral part of mass media, both traditional and electronic. In a democratic society journalists are paid by independent or pro-government media, but in fact they have the same purpose in the society.
Akel
Posted: March 20, 2009 9:47 AM
This is great blog.. Well sad to say but if the old media dies before the new media learn to walk is like a story of a Father and son that the Father dies before the son was born, like everything here in the world there will be sorrow and bad condition and some trials that the son or new media must go on with out any warning before that takes a mistakes or going to a wrong way or falling down that is hard to overcome with the guide or lesson of father of new media. for short it can be exist or if not it will starts on what the old media or father starts for, imagine like you are going back to a year 1600.
Posted: June 23, 2009 10:59 PM