After getting long-winded yesterday explaining how I disagree with a post written last week by Scott Karp, I took Scott’s advice and checked out some other things he’s written at Publishing 2.0. Turns out the first item I found, which he posted yesterday, not only clarifies where he’s coming from (a lot more open-minded then I gave him credit for), but also suggests a practical approach to moving beyond the Media 1.0 vs. Media 2.0 dichotomy and rhetorical stalemate.
Scott begins by showing I was wrong about him being a black & white thinker:
The problem with the current debate over Old Media vs. New Media is that most people see it in binary terms - either Old Media dies and the web becomes a completely open marketplace of commoditized content (as Jeff Jarvis and countless others have argued), or consumers rebel and cling to the structures of Old Media.
He then sums up a key problem and lays out one possible approach to addressing it:
The problem in a nutshell is that New Media has a powerful conversation, but with no synthesis, and Old Media has synthesis, but with a more limited conversation.
Scott also points out that, in addition to providing a synthesis, “established” Old Media publishers (he uses Business Week as an example) also have the benefit of a trusted brand and the collective thinking of an experienced editorial team. He then goes on to suggest one approach to blending the best of both “media” worlds.
What if there was a way for New Media and Old Media to work together to produce the best possible media product? Let’s take Steve Baker’s BusinessWeek cover story:
1. Steve starts by announcing that BusinessWeek is going to tackle the topic, and “seeds” the conversation with a thought-provoking blog entry. (Doing this would allow BW to stake out the terrain and preempt the “scoop” issue, as Jeff rightly suggests.)
2. Steve’s traditional journalistic work - seeking out and interviewing the most interesting people on the topic - is then complemented by the online conversation that he’s started. He won’t control the conversation, but he can participate in it, help guide it, and follow it wherever the blogosphere takes it.
3. Steve writes his article and leverages the collective intelligence, experience, and resources of BusinessWeek’s editorial function - but maybe (and I know this is radical) he submits a “draft” of the article (or synthesis) on his blog and invites comment. The blogosphere conversation would then significantly enrich the synthesis.
4. Steve then publishes his article - the goal is not to be definitive - the conversation will continue. Instead, the goal is to provide a useful guidepost along the road, which can help people find their way without having to navigate the sea of conversation up to that point.
If this is a viable model, there can and should be intense competition for who does the best synthesis. Maybe it will be Old Media brands - or maybe New Media applications. Consumers are equipped to navigate these options.
As a consumer of both “old” and “new” media, I think this is a great idea that would lead to the kind of output I’d be most interested in reading. And though I’m no expert in publishing business models, it also seems like an arena with economic potential worth exploring.
Mitch Shapiro at 11:46 AM|Comments(1)
The key to achieving syntheses in the context of New Media is expediting the advent of deeply liquid, transparent markets for online ads, because the most credible syntheses are the prices that derive from trading in liquid, transparent markets...
Posted by: Frank Ruscica at January 16, 2006 4:11 PM
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