The Complete Miss on The Battle For Media Relevance
The battle for future of media and journalism’s. relevance isn’t a battle of learning new tools of new platforms at all. Industry organizations and scene-y startups have it all wrong. The battle of media relevance is only one battle: do you have the chops to cover a sector or a subject, every which way, with impact & value?
Everything else you hear today?— say out of journalists conferences like ONA16?— is noise. Always, always, play the long game.
Probably the biggest lesson in media startup world: one step removed from original content creation is one step too many removed from success. The biggest disservice media ecosystem has done to smart media entrepreneurs is to push them into starting tools and services companies.
Reportedly’s shutdown is a prime example. Transcendental media talent assuming they were creating a service. Same with Circa, Beacon Reader, and many other: fabulous talent was burned & probably won’t get back into real media creation ever.
And this slide from ONA conference below says it all, not the IN part, but what everyone thinks is the OUT part. I rest my case.
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Rafat Ali is the CEO and founder of Skift, the NYC-based travel intelligence company focused on global travel industry: News, info, data and analysis on airlines, hotels, tourism, cruises, startups, tech and more. You can follow Skift here on LinkedIn, or Twitter or Facebook.
Previously, he was the founder of paidContent, which he sold to Guardian Media Group in 2008.
MACRO Regional Planning Expert & Strategic MENTOR
8 年Travel & Tourism Industry represents 1/10 of Global Economy production YET Nobody can possibly realise this scale and cannot eagerly solve the tough puzzles of Macro TTI Management. Media should play "conscious leading and catalyst roles" to overcome this gap, aiming to educate the National & Regional Destinations on "innovative models of contemporary macro TTI organizations" within a world wide campaigning publicity. Recent apps state that: Tourism is the most effective weapon to save the World!
?? Event-Tech, ??? UGC, ?? SaaS ?? CEO at Walls.io, Founder at Swat.io
8 年I admit that this slide has really amazed me :) Not that I don’t believe in the future jobs mentioned there but because it says “near-future” and a few jobs in the out section are quite new also. The fast advances in technology are disrupting the job market...it’s very possible that people won’t have the same job all their life :)
Student at Ateneo de Davao University
8 年What happened to our media now? Media should be the gatekeepers of the society. People are depending on them. All information or news that they are reporting should be the truth and not biased. What happened now is that most journalists write trash because they lack content or story. Instead of reporting the current news, non-sense topics are aired in the television. If they report news, some details are true or worst not at all because they are sensationalizing it. Just like what is happening now in my country, it is the government versus the media. I am from the Philippines and we have now our newly elected President. What I don’t understand is that our media is so biased because they are reporting news about the newly elected president without even checking if their source is credible. For short, they are creating issues. And if I compare our media to other international media such as CNN, delivery of the news is way too different. Truth is what the people deserve; I hope that responsible journalism should be applied by the journalists before writing or reporting news.
Editor of ZarComMedia Webletter
8 年Journalism is the business of truth-finding and information that is not accessible for ordinary people (who usually have other daily jobs than seeking for "stories" that might simply be characters and events that come out of the creativity or imagination of a "journalist"). The media is no longer the platform which informs about what should concern people, rather it has become a platform for public relations and marketing professionals who create content in order to guide the public opinion towards the goals that are defined by their "masters" (who pay them for their jobs). Creating tools and apps for people to find the "news" or the "gossip" is just another new job which eats out of the hands of the same masters. People need to know what should be the source of their own decisions and therefore many who have the means to use the same media are simply refusing to integrate this highway which will ultimately lead to nowhere. These people, who float above the virtual media world of journalists and market makers, are the real finders of what is truly essential (and valuable), in the short time they live as human beings on this planet. Meanwhile people are becoming the slaves of the "tools" and are forced to find other means of survival in order to be able to waste the rest of their precious life in staying "connected to the world" (while these same people hardly know the names of their neighbors, unless they also join the same social virtual community). It's a catastrophe for humankind and an excellent thing for those who are becoming the eyes and ears of the masters. But the battle has begun.
Founder Tiny Money & Axios Charlotte | Investor
8 年Agreed. Well said.