Old Media, New Media Need to Learn from Each Other - What Old Media Can Learn from New Media
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Ari Rosenberg wrote an article recently for Media Post Publications called "You Can't Teach Speed." He found that one of the biggest differences between old media and new media is the latter's breakneck pace. It's not the only difference, but it helps to account for many of the rest. Publishers that start out online don't usually produce magazines, because it's not their core competency, and when they do, they often don't succeed (does anyone know if eBay's magazine is still around?). But Rosenberg's point was that "online publishers operate without fear and at a speed traditional publishers can not match."
Speed is built into the dot-com culture. Writers and publishers are used to deadlines, but with online publishing those deadlines are even more emphatic. When you're publishing content online, you have to think of each quarter the way a traditional publisher would think of a full year, and think of each week as if it is the fourth quarter. That has been true since before the first dot-com bubble burst, and it's still true today.
When you're going that fast, you don't have time for fear. You acknowledge that you will make mistakes, and then you correct them. So accountability -- knowing who is doing what, and not passing the buck -- is another part of new media culture. It is (or should be) a part of old media culture, too, but in a different way.
This brings us to another issue that new media takes seriously: engagement. New media types don't groan when they receive comments from their readers, because something went wrong and it's somebody's "fault." New media knows that it's part of a community that chooses to read and participate in what it has set up. Because of this, new media publishers pay attention to the comments they receive, and respond to them. New media sites can and do make changes quickly if the input they receive from the community tells them it's necessary. Rosenberg mentioned a 50-person online-centric company that was a client of his; it "literally changed its business model on the fly and is now soaring to new heights."
Being engaged and moving fast is part of what enables new media companies to change so quickly. New media companies also aren't encumbered by the traditions of their old media counterparts; they don't have people around saying "this is how it's always been done" to slow them down. So you typically don't see long meetings with lots of people, or two-hour lunches, at new media companies. New media companies do what works, and if that means shorter meetings with fewer people, or buying lunch for the whole office while a project is on deadline so people can eat and work at their desks, so be it.
Don't get me wrong, new media companies play hard, too -- whether it's foosball or other fun activities on Friday, or the entertaining April first press releases you'll see from many firms. But the fun and games are for blowing off steam, so employees can go back to work refreshed and better able to concentrate on the important tasks at hand.
The tricky thing about all these points is that they're part of the culture. If an old media company wants to adopt these practices -- and most old media companies may have to, if they hope to survive -- it has to come from the top down.
Next: What New Media Companies Can Learn from Old Media >>
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