February 7th, 2009
Cockroach media will survive this recession
The problems that print, TV, and other media companies are having in their transition to an online business is that the revenues from the new world don’t match those from the old. And that means cuts.
Here is an extract from a staff memo by Robert Thomson, Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal, as part of an announcement cutting 25 newsroom jobs.
It is obvious to you all that we are in the midst of an unprecedented economic downturn. We are also in the midst of an unprecedented increase in our readership, in print and online, but a precipitous decline in print advertising revenue has forced a close examination of our structures and of our costs.
It’s interesting to see readership booming yet revenues falling. And that goes to the crux of the disruption happening to media–good times or bad: audience is rising but online revenues are terrible.
So as media, both mainstream and newstream such as Gawker Media, cut, and cut again, because of the economy and disruptive trends, I sometimes feel that I’m not that badly off. If I can still keep the lights on, I can still keep being a journalist.
If I’m working as a journalist for someone else and I lose my job that’s a lot tougher. Journalists lose their byline, their platform, they essentially disappear.
If you lose your job at a news organization you lose your public persona–a journalist that isn’t publishing isn’t.
Fellow journalist blogger Paul Mooney and I were discussing this at the CES show late one night. We figured that as long as we can access an Internet connection in a cafe, we can keep doing what we are doing. So no matter how bad things get we can most likely keep producing media. We called it cockroach media.
Paul is from New York (coincidentally a media town) where cockroaches are formidable. He says he’s given cockroaches some of his best hits and they would still be alive and moving.
This economic downturn will be very good for cockroach media, imho.
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Please see Cockroach Media:
Paul Mooney - Living, Linking and Learning
Silicon Valley Watcher - reporting on the business of technology and media
Tom Foremski reports on the business and culture of Silicon Valley at the intersection of technology and media. He also writes at Silicon Valley Watcher. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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