The wonderful thing about the Internet is that nobody controls it. And if you can’t control the medium, you can’t control the message. That seems obvious enough in this age 100 million blogs, YouTube, Digg, and Twitter mania. In fact, just this morning I was invited to a Facebook group called End of Control to discuss the issues that arise as control shifts from media companies to consumers. (The group was started by author Gerd Leonhard, who is writing a book on the same subject).
Yet industries that are used to control don’t like to give it up. Old media is like that. Even in this day and age, its struggle with control issues continues. Old media knows the relationship with its audience has changed, but it is still not quite sure how to deal with it.
To illustrate what I’m talking about, let me share two anecdotes from last week. On Wednesday, I attended the Mediabistro Circus conference, along with mostly other New York media professionals. One repeated theme I noticed a few speakers bring up was that to succeed on the Web it is necessary to give up control. This was delivered as a revelation, even though industry watchers have been observing this for the past few years. Yes, the audience (gasp) talks back, and they often prefer talking to each other than simply consuming the news that media professionals decide to dole out.
I guess change takes a while to sink in. But it struck me as odd that something like this still needs to be explained. The other folks attending the conference, from what I could gather, were largely from the digital divisions of newspapers, magazines, and other broadcast media. Was it really news to any of them that to engage an audience online, you have to let them comment, vote, editorialize, and even select what stories get highlighted?
I don’t think so. But there is a difference between knowing something, and being able to do something about it—in this case changing your own ingrained habits and convincing colleagues (many whom grew up in the broadcast era) to do the same.
Now, contrast this group with the Web entrepreneurs I was hanging out with on Thursday in Toronto at the Mesh conference. Nobody needed to explain to them that to succeed on the Web they should stop trying to control the message or the audience. Maybe that’s because they are not trying to control the audience in the first place. Rather, it is the exact opposite. Some of them are too busy creating the very tools that allows people in the audience to cover events themselves and broadcast their own messages. While others have helped to build entire businesses around giving the audience more control.
One of those was speaker Daniel Burka, the creative director of Digg (and co-founder of Pownce). He noted that nobody in their right mind would start a print newspaper company today. Just look at how much money newspaper companies spend on trucks and paper and printing. The only way to pay for all of that infrastructure (not to mention the army of reporters, editors, and photographers required to create the content) is by controlling the audience and making them come to you for the news in large numbers.
But that doesn’t make any sense on the Web. Even Digg, which is supposed to bring together the best headlines from across the Web and other media sites, doesn’t pretend it can be your single source of information. As Burka put it:
This notion of One Page To Rule Them All makes no sense. Our home page is not the only home page you visit. It is a poor design decision if you think you can create a one-size fits all destination.
Not everyone in old media is blind to the realities of this new world. For instance, Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine, gave one of the more enlightened keynotes at the Mediabistro conference, in which he suggested that media companies take a more tiered approach to presenting (and monetizing) content.
At the top of the pyramid would be traditional journalism, in which writers and editors obsess over every single word and image, and fight tooth and nail for exclusive access to sources on behalf of their readers. At the bottom of the pyramid would be reader comments, Twitters, and blog posts linking to the mainstream stories of the media outlet. And in the middle would be a mingling of the two, where the best comments and audience blog posts bubble up and meet with reporter blogs and group blogs.
Stories from the top of the pyramid would run high-CPM ads sold by the media company’s salesforce, while the Long-Tail comments and blog posts at the bottom of the pyramid would run Long-Tail ads from AdSense and other ad networks. As stories move up the pyramid, they would tap into higher CPM ads.
Maybe Anderson needs to flip his pyramid upside down, but at least he is thinking about bridging the world of old media with the two-way media of the Web. The implication is that the best stuff will make its way to the middle layer, and could then feed back up into the top of his media pyramid. Perhaps these audience posts and comments could be highlighted on the Website or maybe even appear in print—although Anderson didn’t go that far in his speech.
But giving up control is not just about rebroadcasting the best contributions from the audience. It’s about creating places where the best conversations can happen. Anderson certainly understands the potential and power of niche media. As a personal side project, he’s created his own Ning-powered social network called DIY Drones for aficionados of unmanned aerial vehicles. It brings in all of $400 a month in AdSense revenues, but he’s getting $7 CPMs. Best of all, he lets the community that has gathered around it contribute most of the content. (Note that DIY Drones is not part of Conde Nast or Wired.com).
“Be the tallest dwarf,” he recommends to anyone who wants to create their own niche media site.
It’s not bad advice. But can old media survive in a land of dwarfs? They tend to be awfully hard to control.
I agree, control over the web doesn’t work. Collaboration and sharing does. Blogs are the new magazines and twitter, friendfeed etc are the front pages with the quick headlines pointing to the pages ‘inside’.
What old media doesn’t get is that they have to abandon cannibalize their old cash cows in order to succeed in the new order. That’s tough to do when you report quarterly to your shareholders which brings us to an ironic conclusion: The mechanisms of the ultimate capitalism are bringing down it’s own Goliaths and give the Davids a free run to take over.
I think CBS is doing a great job of breaking this mold with the CBS Audience Network. They are essentially partnering with the various online video sites (eg: YouTube), and uploading tons of small clips/shows.
They are not requiring the users to come to them (Hulu), but finding the users where they are at.
USA Today is highlighting reader comments at the very top of its home page. I winder how they are picked … readers or editors? Anybody at Pluck or USA Today know?
Well, its hard giving up mass manipulation. Who is going to set public opinion, fads, who is going to tell us we should be mad at something or accepting of something?
The only two sites that rule them all right now are google and popurls.
Bravos, Michael. Excellent post. Old media has a leadership problem that is being seriously complicated by a massive failure of imagination. The walled garden mindset is alive and well in a day when the main page or any single landing page is becoming increasingly irrelevant. What old media needs to do, must do, is get into the export business rather than continuing to rely on being exclusively in the business of import (listeners, viewers, visitors). This demands reinvention of the media business model.
Perhaps using a pyramid was attempt to assuage egos in old media, but it seems that in reality the pinnacle would be that bubbling middle ground where the best of the audience and the best of traditional old media meets up. I love the idea though.
I too agree Erick, but how to stop spammers in this user generated or web 2.0 news sites.
Erick, great article. With the influx of questionable writers to TC, you are its star.
It’s worth noting that some new media companies are controlling the medium and making a mint from it. Facebook comes to mind.
Google also controls and hides the the Adwords/Adsense algorithms which allows advertisers to talk to searchers, despite advertisers desperately wanting to know more.
Control often works, but I agree it’s certainly a riskier strategy on the web.
Erick, thanks for the mention — this post is spot-on! I made a video on this, a few months ago, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUFC2YHaiVE :::: Attention is the New Currency - Forget the idea of “controlling distribution”
Keep it rolling! Gerd
We’re having a great conversation about this on FriendFeed. Oh, wait.
IDG Nederland’s (print!) magazine Zoom.nl gets 90% of its content from its readers. The whole magazine has only two full-time employees working on it. I organized the recent Lunch 2.0 event at their offices and found it very interesting how they conceive of themselves as changing from a publishing company to a media company. As they put it, they now provide the ‘roads’ and users are free to drive on them when, where and how they want. I came away from the event very impressed with their operation and their strategy.
Interesting, but new media has its own control issues. What else is Facebook’s walled garden but an effort to control both users and the content they create?
Rather than making the tired point that “old media” needs to get a clue, I’d rather look at who benefits from what. If it’s possible to create a closed structure, most companies do, new or old. The reason startups and web people in general embrace openness isn’t because they’re so enlightened, it’s because creating a walled garden is hard, and getting harder. Most companies benefit more from being open.
In other words openness, for all the good it’s done society and the economy, is a side effect. It would be more interesting to explore that, rather than smugly embrace trite conventional wisdom about “old media.”
The question isn’t whether or not media companies should change, but how to do it without imploding. Making $400/month (gross) on Ning isn’t really a solution.
how long will your lead sentence stay true?
Having worked for conservative (german and US dailies) and liberal (US alternative weeklies) old media companies I have to say that their agenda setting, research and independence (which is pretty strong in most newsrooms I worked for) is able to help browsing through the infinite amount of information out there. I do need assistance with this! Otherwise I would be just plain overwhelmed. And as long as there is no intelligent assistent. Some sort of a smart push service that keeps me up to date I will keep visiting nytimes.com, my local daily homepage and have one or two magazine and newspaper subscriptions. Plus I like having paper in my hands especially for longer articles.
But the article is great. Good perspective. Will recommend it to some of my old media clients (who I know can deal with it).
I believe everything in this world needs somebody or someone to govern it in order to make it in harmony. Too much freedom is bad for the society. Anyway, usually that someone that has the authority usually misused the power. So, what the heck?
Two comments:
1. This notion of media “control” is, to my mind, a confusion of fact with science fiction. What I mean by science fiction is the idea that media companies are interested in controlling the thoughts/information delivered to the general public a la dystopian fantasy books/movies/etc. (The Matrix, delivered to your door each morning). This might make for compelling drama, but it bears no relationship to the workaday realities of media companies whose interest is not in control but rather in marketshare, ie. profitability.
Yes, companies want to gain as big a piece of the market as possible (as does Google of Facebook or Huffington Post, or anyone else trying to monetize content), but that does not mean that they are interested in controlling the message of said content for nefarious reasons. Editorial decisions are made less on ideological concerns and more on what content will appeal to their core audience demographics (and by extension, their advertisers). And ALL decisions are trumped by the two ultimate concerns: protecting the brand’s reputation (ie. getting it right) and the company’s competitive position (ie. not getting sued). This will not change in the new media space, nor should it.
2. All this fuss about “trucks, paper and ink” misses the point of what the actual costs are of running a news organization, namely your workforce. The cost of printing and distributing a daily newspaper, while not inconsequential, are minor compared with the costs of a labor staff capable of competent reporting, writing and editing (again, getting it right and not getting sued). While there are many in the blogosphere capable of good journalism (TechCrunch being a solid example), there are a great many more who have no understanding of journalistic practice and even less in the way of access to sources of information. More often than not, what passes for reporting on blogs is really just plagarism from supposed DTM sources like newspapers, networks and wire services. Opinion is cheap, reporting is expensive.
Moreover, the costs of servers, bandwidth and tech R&D are themselves not inconsequential. A printing press can run for decades, whereas websites need constant redesign and server farms need upgrading, all of which requires capital.
Simply, niche media already exists and pre-dates the Internet. Go to any reasonably sized bookstore and look at the number of specialty magazines printed for niche interests. The difference is distribution — can distribute worldwide for the same cost as locally. This is an important innovation that will ultimately benefit both “old” and “new” media companies alike, but to say that changing the distribution model should inherently change the content creation model is to confuse apples and oranges.
How exactly do you define “control”?
BTW…I call BS on Chris Anderson’s $7 CPM claim. He’s using AdSense.
Great post, Erick.
Excellent post Erick. I strongly believe that traditional media needs to give more and more control up.
Right now who sets the news agenda? It’s still mainstream media and the agenda is set by a small percentage of the public. They are called “editors” - because they command a freelance budget bolstered by advertising.
One project I’m working on Spot.Us hopes to allow the public to determine the news agenda by letting the share the cost of hiring a reporter.
Onward.
Being someone that is very interested in the Sports Media space it would be interesting to know what real type of CPMs a website can expect if ads are sold direct to a media buyer. Since I am on the outside looking in here is what I come up with
Espn, cnnsi, etc: ?
Fantasy Sports Ventures (no control): $5-$15 confirmed
Deadspin(Number 1 sports blog) represented by Gawker media (no control): $5-$8 confirmed
Yardbarker ad network (no control): ?
Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
@18: it could be BS but odds are he using adsense as his remnant inventory because he probably can’t sell out all his inventory especially when TechCrunch links him up.
Information in the old media is provided by a small group of individuals in the society that have different interest than the masses.
Information on the web is still made by these people but not only, it is also split with the masses since everybody can post a comment or a video on Youtube. The only difference is a CNN video will be watched 1,000,000 times and an independent one 10,000 times (unless it gets a big buzz).
For this reason, the web remains the most free media (that’s why media moguls don’t like it).
What we need to understand is there is no democracy and freedom of speech in the mainstream media. Add to that the merging of press and TV networks which cause the concentration of information, that stays under the control of a smaller and smaller group of elite.
The shakeup of traditional media is good because consolidation of media and its power is very very scary. However, one need look no further than Digg to see that the democratization of “news” is the second worst thing.
Journalistic and academic ethics are significantly lacking in new media, and my biggest concern is whether they can be resurrected in a world veering towards a tabloid sensibility as it becomes the only way to rise above the din.
It is not jut “old media” that needs to give up its obsession with control. Name an industry outside of tech that “gets it?” The legal industry is a case in point. The web will transform industry after industry, especially any knowledge based industry, but it will take “new blood” to lead the way. Old habits die hard but old thinking seems to last forever.
Great points — I love the image of the “tallest dwarf.” I think that old media is definitely falling by the wayside; the challenge now is for the consumer to find a way to still access a variety of viewpoints and not simply select to receive micro-opinions that mirror their own.
Thanks for your blog!
Jeremy Gregg, Editor
The Raiser’s Razor
http://theraiser.blogspot.com
Brilliant post Erick, @25 you nailed it too.
I don’t think so.
this entire article is photoshopped. RICK ROLL!
Why don’t you let random readers post on TechCrunch for a day?
Openness is just a fancy word used by enterprises to avoid earning a reputation like that of Microsoft’s
Inspired by your post Erick I’m starting a network for Wannabee Dwarf Controllers and applaud El Anderson for creating the oxymoronic take down of take home’s with ‘Be the tallest dwarf’.
A good way to start- Newspapers Missing Benefits of Social Media http://tinyurl.com/6p4erc
Not sure of this. Show me a non-controlled media site that is making anywhere near as much money as the “controlled” old guard media. Old media btw isn’t being killed by upstart Bloggers, it’s being killed by Ebay and Craigslist which are hardly non-controlled environments.
All business is about control. Controlling your market, your marketing, your suppliers, your customers…whatever you can get control of means you have more control over your business and your destiny and build walls against your competition.
Old media and new media alike have tried to do this. Apple is now having its day in the sun finally controlling our music platform. AOL had its day as a walled garden.
TV and cable had their day fed by government licenses.
New media outlets all struggle for the same but the barriers are too low and all media will now compete. Endlessly eating their young and beginning anew. Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts.
Interesting post!
I guess I would be called “Old Media” being the oldest newspaper in the history of North America. Our newspaper founded in 1764, is old, the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph.
However, we have embraced new media tools and have experienced the howls of our peers. Our site is both a walled garden on our professional journalism side but our commenting and blog areas are totally open.
I don’t believe newspapers will disappear. We are branded sheets of paper with important news, gathered by individuals living and working in the communities they serve. What I predict is that daily newspapers will suffer more than the weekly newspapers for the reason that local content is king. News at the local level is the only news people will open their wallets to read and feel connected to.
There are thousands of digital citizens out there predicting the death of newspapers, but we will not go away, as we make active investments in content creation. This is an essential part of intellectual property law and it will be extended to the internet in time. The tools are being built. I am involved in that pursuit currently and it is an IP technology that will help all publishers of creative content in North America. Stay tuned…
Winning By Sharing; is defined as a state of cooperation between individuals, companies and nation states where there is a continuous fair exchange of value as opposed to the prevailing nature of business and government that is predicated on the notion of “I win. You lose.”
The term is derived from, and inspired by a number of ground breaking research findings most notably from Yochai Benkler (professor of Law at Yale University). Benkler’s definitive paper, Coase’s Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm, on the implications of the Open Source movement concludes that peer to peer sharing as a means of production is inherently more efficient and resilient than hierarchical, command and control organisational models.
Well, I’m not surprised by what you encountered at the mediabistro Circus; I spend a little time on their BBS, and while the members are clearly longtime journalism professionals, they can also be quite ignorant of what I consider the most basic Web 2.0 knowledge.
That’s fine, so are a lot of folks, which is why I teach an entry-level social media workshop, but this is supposedly a bunch of high-level freelance journalists (with some snarky, holier-than-thou comments on the BBS to go with that ‘tude.)
Not a week on the BBS goes by that I don’t think to myself, my Gawd, he/she doesn’t know THAT? Then, I’ll try to politely teach the answer with a BBS reply, because how else are we going to get people up to speed?
Guys like Seamus Condron on the editorial staff are filling the mediabistro Web site with Web 2.0 video tutorials and good industry info (I’m reading your post because it’s on their front page news summary today) but they are way ahead of their audience, from what I can see.
No one here seems to be talking about the SAG contract negotiations coming up. It’s looking like the main issue will be that the Actors want full consent any time a clip of them is used.
This would make a lot of applications really difficult to work with (mashups, video sharing, etc). Everything could be held up on getting consent from one person.
We need a lot of attitude readjustment from across the board. We’ll just have to see what happens.
‘Maybe Anderson needs to flip his pyramid upside down’ - Erick, do you really think that commentors and twitterers are going to gain insights into, and report CIA wiretaps, Political scandal, terrorism etc. You seem to forget that there might be room for some sort of balance between these multiple mediums in the future.
A new episode in this story: Copiepresse, newspaper corp from Belgium, suing Google News for E49mln.
http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/.....look-back/
“Can’t we all just get along”….
All kidding aside, I am fascinated by the quiet and not-so-quiet tension between “Old” and “New” forms of media.
“Old” media critiques “New’ for not necessarily being professionally educated and credentialed. While “New” critiques “Old” for the post’s observations around control.
Here’s the best news…we have something to talk about.
Interesting post. I am not sure it is about control as much as a distribution media which has not been understood completely yet… All the old parts will and should be there, the web is another channel with a different set of tools. Quicker and more open… Control as you put it needs to be there, brands need to exist, they just need some time to adjust and adapt… it is the same as always we have just been handed a new tools. Keep the discussion going and lets be open and adoptive to whats next…
Forget control. Leadership.
Customers resist being controlled; but appreciate it when businesses lead and serve their needs.
Hey awesome blog! Know anyone who would be interested in part time admin’ing a Linux box? Hit me up!