Uneven Distribution.

PubCamp. Part II

June 24th, 2008

New vs. Old Media Panel

This was actually a complete debacle. Almost everyone up on stage was from oldskool media, and the audience was dominated by nuskool practitioners. In the end the crowd turned, and the final summary was actually delivered by an audience member. But here’s what I did get out of it…

New media currently supports old media because the new media can tell publishers more about their audience than they’ve ever known before, therefore creating greater ad value. But this is nothing more than a stopgap. Eventually the old media will become obsolete, and watching this panel it quickly became apparent that they haven’t worked out their gameplan for when they must survive wholy online. To be honest I don’t know if they can, they have spent their entire careers working with a dfinition of ‘content’ that is, in the online space, completely wrong.

“New media needs old media to get people to find their sites”. This was an interesting point and one that never really got discussed any further. One of the new media panellists pointed out that he’s never spent a cent on marketing, almost bragging about that fact. But I wonder if he’s considered how well his site might be going if he’d spent some money.

“Print is the life support for your online until online becomes the life support for your print until you close your print” - Ben Gerholdt from IDG. That was one of the few comments that actually got a positive reaction.

Debate: “That the new world of media choice is a dagger to the hearts of producers and creators alike”
I’ll admit that while I enjoyed listening to the debate, at the end I hadn’t really heard a whole lot of new thinking. If there was one idea that perhaps addresses the debate topic, it’s that value can only be created in content that has an inherent value that cannot be replicated digitally. That unreplicable element may only be a tiny element of the content, but it is immensely valuable.

Comments

Interesting Observation there Nick.

I personally would have loved to go. Only actually learnt about this event after the fact.

Hi Nic,

Good coverage … not sure what this means though …

value can only be created in content that has an inherent value that cannot be replicated digitally. That unreplicable element may only be a tiny element of the content, but it is immensely valuable.

Micmerty,

Sorry about the vagueness of that paragraph. It’s really an idea that’s worthy of a whole post.

I guess the point is that in traditional media, value is much easier to place on content. A CD physically had to be purchased, as did a newspaper.

In the digital world however, that content is infinitely replicable for essentially no cost. As long as that is the case, people will pirate music and re-post newspaper articles. Trying to stop these actions is completely pointless, instead content creators should be looking for where they can create value (and therefore monetisation) in what they do.

Before the digital age fine-art was the best example of this. Uniqueness creates value. In music we are starting to see digital-savvy bands who are happy to give away their music because people will happily pay for live experiences and limited-release physical objects.

Kevin Kelly has some fantastic thoughts on this topic here and here.

Hope this cleared up that last paragraph a bit.