Guest post: If you want an independent media start supporting it
As Mumbrella reported earlier this week, The Podcast Network, headed by Cameron Reilly, is facing a funding crisis. Here Reilly – who presents G’Day World, Australia’s first podcast – argues for the importance of an independent media in a rapidly changing landscape.
I hope by now most of you have already read Clay Shirky’s brilliant recent post Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, where he points out that “when reality is labelled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry”. For too long, many people in the media industry had the arrogance to believe they were invulnerable to the onslaught of online media.
For years I have debated Australian journalists and newspaper editors trying to explain that the writing was on the wall – not because of a technology shift but because of an economic shift enabled by technology. In every debate, I was told “we’re going to be here forever”.
I trust that with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer moving 100% online this week; with Leonard Downie, VP at Large at The Washington Post, saying the business models of media “are beyond broken, it’s completely shattered … newspaper companies as we know them are going to disappear,”; and with lay-offs happening across the industry in Australia, what was unthinkable a few years ago is becoming accepted as a reality today.
Can’t say I’m a big fan of the government getting involved in independent media funding, what it needs to do is create a regulatory regime where competition is possible. In an ideal world,I’d like to have enough advertisers that it doesn’t matter if I annoy one with what I write, but that isn’t going to happen as long as the advertising industry in this country lacks vision and ideas. We see some brilliant ads and campaigns let down by an implementation plan that says we’ll just drop all our money at ACP/PBL or whatever it is called this week.
SO my question to the government is whether or not it can create a market place of competition, where a small publisher or media entitiy can create something meaningful and survive.
Nice article Cameron. We’re in the same boat here. I’d hoped naively that independent media would find more support. FWIW my friend Susan Bratton who runs http://www.personallifemedia.com and is working on getting advertisers onboard has a similar story.
Maybe those of us in independent media need to find an efficient way to work together. We’re need to look after our own futures and that needs a new approach and structure. Co-operation is the only way.
Remember that old slogan, Content is King?
My feeling is that content is what’s going to save it. With so much print media closing down, with reductions in print ad spend (I’ve seen CondeNast Traveller halve in thickness in 4 months), and the consolidation of content all over the media shop, the old user/consumer mindest will have to come around too: in the sense of realising online and independent is where it’s at – locally and internationally.
The problem is the returns, or the fact you’re competing in a massively free environment. Most of the revenue models are based on pre-web advertising models.
The Overture/PPC model was one of the first smart newbies, but only for transaction-based business. There aren’t many models for making money online for content generators. Traffic leveraging and er, syndication… Goodbye, that won’t pay for hosting.
I’m secretly hoping that the current economic crisis will inadvertently push new models to the fore. It’s sad to see so many newspapers and journals die; it’s the end of an old model of publishing. But it may also be the best thing for online publishers; for online advertising to become interestingly diverse and dependable.
But it also calls for new economics. It may be a long time yet (in internet technology years) before something like an attention-based economy arrives. Because that’s the resource at the heart of this all.
Rino