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.
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.
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.
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.
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.