These days, most big trade and high-end specialized publishers are in consolidation, if not crisis, mode, merging titles, shuttering publications and centralizing operations to shore up operating profits. “Resource management experience,” and not journalistic chops or vision, is now the skill most prized at trade publishing companies.
The upshot of all this cost-cutting and centralization is that trade publishing companies, often multinational in scope, are now bureaucratic outfits that move too slowly to adapt to the rapid changes in publishing.
Worse, the “managers” who run these outfits are, more often than not, process-oriented ciphers who can’t smell a good story or instinctively sense a hot trend. They’re empty suits equipped with charts and graphs whose bonuses are driven not by top-line growth but by bottom-line profitablity achieved through cost-cutting.
In short, the traditional trade publishing world is in a death spiral.
Contrast this situation (the above scenario is informed by many conversations I’ve had recently with editors, publishers and journalists from various trade pubs) with the worlds of Mike Arrington and Om Malik, two entrepreneurs who are building rapidly growing blog-based businesses in the communications and high-tech arenas, the traditional purview of trade publishers.
USA Today’s Michele Kessler profiles these two friends, who are also now friendly rivals. (I’ve known Om for years and it’s true, as Kessler notes, that he’s one of the nicest guys in Silicon Valley. I met Arrington over drinks at Mesh and was struck by how thoughtful he seems one-on-one, in contrast to the bombast he displays on stage.)
Although they’re both building their fortunes in the blogosphere, in reality they’re stomping around the turf of traditional trade publications, swiping ad dollars and attention that used to go to niche magazines devoted to computers, cable, phone companies and so forth.
Contrast the shoestring budgets, passion and dedication (OK, workaholism and obssession is more like it…as Om says in the article “Sleep and I have broken up. Coffee and I are having an affair”) of Om and Arrington to the meetings, flow charts, procedures and operational reviews of big trade publishers. There’s just no question which kind of publisher will triumph.
In many respects, Om and Arrington and all the other new breed of bloggers and Internet-based publishers are merely following the age-old law of “how great publishing ventures get built:” one person with a golden gut toils tirelessly and succeeds. From William Randolph Hearst to Henry Luce to Michael Bloomberg, and thousands of variations big and small along the way, successful publishing businesses are usually built by single and mostly maniacal individuals (and alas, they’re usually men…Martha Stewart is perhaps the sole woman who fits this mold.)
However, the Internet has made it possible for the first time in history for guys like this to go toe-to-toe with the big boys. Which means that all the Oms-in-the-making also stand a chance to come out of nowhere and get profiled by USA Today, thereby reducing the chances of Arrington or Om from ever becoming magnates the way Luce or Bloomberg did.
Even so, both guys have a huge leg up over the clueless trade publishing business. They’re the future and the trade publishing business as we’ve known it is about to become history.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:10 PM | Print | Comments (0)The Washington Post has this piece today that talks about Google’s growing team of lobbyists in DC, eleven today, when just two years ago the company had none.
Interesting enough, but this is well-trod territory (see here and here). What’s more interesting is whether Google will use its new-found lobbying sophistication for good or evil.
Anyway, this non-newsworthy piece is probably a direct result of Google’s decision to join the still-small ranks of corporate tech and communications policy bloggers. You can now wager a lot of money that trade associations, lobbying oufits, and DC offices of cable, telco, content and high-tech companies are rushing to launch their own heretofore-scorned blogs.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:48 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Blogs We Read
