There are a
lot of problems with media in general today whether you’re looking at it from
the perspective of the downward spiral of print media, the shift to digital
challenges, the decline in the quality of journalism in general, the lack of
sustainable revenue models online, the list goes on.
But at the
end of the day these problems are all just symptoms, much like a fever is a
symptom of a bigger problem.
Unfortunately, we live in a society that tends to have knee jerk
reactions to symptoms and our first course of action is almost always to treat
the symptom first – we take Tylenol or a cold and flu remedy to deal with the
fever and runny nose before we ask the question “Why do I have a fever?” But if you treat the fever for too long
without addressing the real problem, the real problem will continue to worsen
and in extreme cases can even turn fatal.
The current
state of media is no different. Print
media came down with a fever and industry leaders around the globe immediately
jumped in as healers to treat the symptom, but no one ever really managed to
get to the core of the problem. Unfortunately,
treating a symptom will almost always provide a false sense of security, or
well-being, as some improvement will take place.
However, the core problem is still festering below the masked symptoms
and as things worsen the finger pointing starts. Executives get blamed for
complacency and a lack of action being the cause of the provided remedies not
working. Management gets blamed for remedies not producing sufficient results.
The industry as a whole gets blamed and criticized when setbacks occur.
But pointing
the finger at executives or management over the current state of print media is
like blaming a family physician when known medicines don’t work on a new and
unknown epidemic. It’s not to say that
they are blameless, but it is to say that they are not likely to have the
remedy or even necessarily know how to find the remedy. The thing they are most guilty of is not
finding the right questions to ask and the right people to ask. But when all is said and done, placing blame
in any direction isn’t productive and won’t solve anything. The important thing
now is for everyone involved to be open minded enough to accept the real
problem and embrace the solution.
One of the
symptoms for the print media ailment is the movement of readers and advertisers
from print to digital, causing a decline in revenues, so leaders pushed for
print to transition to digital – mostly using the same techniques that were
used in print. But since losing readers
and advertisers to digital was only a symptom, the techniques of treating that
symptom have been superficial in their results, leaving the core problem
unchecked. Because of this, additional
symptoms have developed to the point that everyone is now scrambling to deal
with an onslaught of symptoms while underneath it all the core problem is
slowly turning the situation fatal.
The real
unfortunate part is that the core problem isn’t actually as difficult or
complex or challenging as one would assume and could have been a relatively
easy fix – but that type of assessment rarely becomes apparent until hindsight
sets in. Furthermore, by taking this
symptom treating approach we have ended up creating a secondary infection.
I know the question that burns at your mind is "So what is the core problem and the secondary infection?" You may actually already know the answer and are merely curious whether or not I in-fact know it. Well as much as that may be the case, I'm afraid I'm not quite ready to take that level of detail public - not yet.
We need to align with some Investors and associate partners first - but I assure you, something big is coming - hopefully sooner rather later!
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