Strategically free « PREV | NEXT »: Off to Arts Presenters

The newspaper as politburo?
The Guardian posts some interesting thoughts from Clay Shirky on what might happen to traditional media in 2009. In a nutshell, he says, ''2009 is going to be a bloodbath.''

While traditional publishing companies and nonprofit cultural organizations are obviously different beasts in many respects, they have eerie similarities as well. Both represent fairly well established assumptions about how content is created and distributed, and where value should be extracted in the business process. Both are having those foundational assumptions challenged by the rise of new media and its tendencies toward user-created and user-curated content. Says Shirky:

The great misfortune of newspapers in this era is that they were such a good idea for such a long time that people felt the newspaper business model was part of a deep truth about the world, rather than just the way things happened to be. It's like the fall of communism, where a lot of the eastern European satellite states had an easier time because there were still people alive who remembered life before the Soviet Union -- nobody in Russia remembered it. Newspaper people are like Russians, in a way.
If the coming year is, indeed, a bloodbath for traditional media business models, it will be well worth watching what innovations and new insights come out the other side.
January 7, 2009 8:45 AM | | Comments (4) |

Categories:

4 Comments

To follow Roff's statement the problem for both firms is inherent in the changing of media and the vast availability of news and art. Newspapers and Cultural Institutions formally were able to create a barrier to gaining information, thus allowing them to become rackets of their prospective media. Now that the internet is really being to take off and be accessible to everyone( and at all times with the inventions or blackberries and Iphones), media is becoming more democratized. Youtube is a prime example of this, instead of watching what the corporate media puts in front of me, I am able to search a relatively infinite number of videos to find my entertainment. Moreover I no longer have to go to my local museum and see what some board of directors choose as art, I possess in my hand a portal to experience millions of website completely dedicated to aesthetic pleasure.
However I must yield the point that as long as classism exist there will be a necessary need for institutes to provide at least a facade of a barrier to entry, so that certain people can experience something they view as being elite.

I disagree with the idea that newspapers don't develop or maintain an emotional relationship with their audiences. The newspaper is a product - and in some ways a service - at the heart of relationships, and time-honored routines...and certainly becomes a trusted and distinct voice for many people. I see many, many parallels between our industry and theirs.

All enterprises, including cultural organizations and newspapers, are established in particular times and places, in the context of current conditions (economic and otherwise), to satisfy existing needs. This is basic marketing theory. As time progresses, everything changes – styles, tastes, interests, preferences, economic conditions, technology, regulatory environment, climate and so on. The survival of any organization or institution – whether cultural, informational, healthcare, industrial or whatever – depends entirely on its ability to discern change and evolve in the ways it provides products and/or services. This too is basic marketing theory, with a little Darwin for added spice. No matter how long an ‘idea’ - or an enterprise - has been good, sooner or later it needs to change how, where and/or what it does, or it becomes irrelevant and undesired.

That's a fantastic comparison. I do think that cultural orgs have one things on their side that newspapers don't. Cultural organizations' quality includes an emotional connection with its audience. There is value in the family, community, and intrapersonal stimulation that cultural organizations sometimes provide. If they can amplify this asset, they might prolong their life.

Leave a comment

About...

...The Artful Manager
What if we fundamentally misunderstood what it meant to run the arts "like a business"? more...

...Andrew Taylor
Andrew TaylorAmong other things, he's Director of an MBA degree program in Arts Administration. more...

Get your MBA in Arts Administration

Social Networks

Follow me on Twitter
View Andrew Taylor's profile on LinkedIn
ConnectCP International

Archives

Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

AJ Ads

Introducing
AJ Arts Blog Ads

Now you can reach the most discerning arts blog readers on the internet. Target individual blogs or topics in the ArtsJournal ad network.

Advertise Here

AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
critical difference
Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Dog Days
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Mind the Gap
No genre is the new genre
Performance Monkey
David Jays on theatre and dance
Plain English
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Real Clear Arts
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

jazz
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

classical music
Creative Destruction
Fresh ideas on building arts communities
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
PianoMorphosis
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

theatre
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Another Bouncing Ball
Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog