While media executives sat in their leather-trimmed offices and looked out their windows onto streets filled with the denizens of their cities, new media content creators from all corners of the globe emerged. Once people found their voices and the means to shepherd them beyond their audible range, they realized that they could attract sizeable audiences online. Bloggers have been lifted into positions that rival mass media stars. New media sites command audiences that executives at the alphabet networks covet.
For all their money and power, traditional media barons have proven that with baggage you are unable to move with the flexibility and speed of newcomers. Publishers have ceded market share to the 14-year old teenager obsessed with all things pop culture. She’s typing away on the laptop her mom bought her for Christmas, publishing articles that reach hundreds of thousands of subscribers daily. Now that people have seized upon the opportunity to share their thoughts, ideas, and opinions, their voices cannot be muted.
The rise of social media has only strengthened the position of the new media content creator. Facebook cemented its position in our society during a perfect time in our media transformation. With its growth have come more channels for stories and news to travel through; to reach beyond the platforms owned and operated by corporate juggernauts. As online communities grow larger and larger, so too do the portals through which its users’ content reach. Just as tribes passed along stories as they ventured across countries and continents, social networks like Facebook and Twitter provide the pathways though which news and information live well beyond the tangible reach of their creators.
Can you with certainty tell me what the news and media industries will look like five years from now? Similar to the maturation cycle of a child, our media channels are in a position where becoming more self-aware will foster their path to a higher order of knowledge. With the pull from people who have billions of dollars invested in these sectors, career journalists who have invested their lives in the pursuit of news, and newly imagined content creators who view today’s technology as the rule, are all being forced to acknowledge the other while determining how best they can coexist and live on. It’s inevitable that some companies that have staked their lives on media will survive, some will look completely different from what they once represented, and new organizations will emerge that turn the entire industry on its ahead.
Rather than fearing what lies beyond that which you can see, I recommend embracing the unknown. Learn as much as you can about those that came before you and those organizations that are looking years down the road. Even though it may not always appear or sound like it, I have great admiration and respect for entities like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. These publications have played an enormous role in our society’s history and will continue to do so into the future. As we have seen in many other industries, with technology comes new models and ways of doing things. Sometimes this disrupts entire industries and for others it pushes forward innovation that has been years in the making.
