Old Media, New Media - Why Not Both?

Photo by Striatic

Opinions vary on whether new media is responsible for the challenges being faced by newspapers, television networks and other traditional media. These contrasting points of view show the extremes in the debate:

According to R. Scott Hill in his book, The Blog Ahead, blogging is "enabling a radical new form of egalitarian discourse" by allowing anyone to bypass the hierarchies of command and control. It sounds like a good thing for those of us who feel gatekeepers have too much power, right?

Andrew Keen doesn't agree as you can tell from the title of his book, The Cult of the Amateur, where he expands on "How blogs, My Space, You Tube and the rest of today's user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture and our values".

We hear of newspapers seeking creditor protection, reducing staff and trying to survive falling revenues, but new media has similar challenges. It's not easy to turn online readership into revenue either. Perhaps the path to success depend on both worlds working together.

There are already a number of traditional and new media fusion examples:

• Some of today's best-selling books started their life as blogs. Once the blogger developed enough content and buzz for their subject a traditional book becomes a natural next step. If the blogging is about Julia and by Julie, it also becomes a movie.
• On the ellen daytime talk show they use Twitter to create a rewarding game that links a college campus with the live show. A recent one involved students receiving a Tweet to be one of the first group to bring a bar of soap to a central point to receive a prize. Then those winners were asked to do a specific stunt (dress up and act out a song title from a musical group) in order to win the super prize. This provided TV content, built the show's brand by increasing "followers" and advertised the prize sponsors.
• Newspapers have to go to print while some stories are still evolving. The National Post has a service that enables readers to get breaking news on their mobile devices using Scanlife software and 2D bar codes located near specific articles. This prompts their smartphone to display updated content related to the story which readers use to follow the latest developments.
• Of course the most obvious example of the successful fusion of traditional and digital media is Indigo-Chapters and Amazon. In addition to using the Internet for their catalogue and their sales channel, you can now even browse the contents of many books with their "look inside the book" feature (this is available for both the books mentioned above.

These examples show that both sides of this debate will win when good content and ease of access are wrapped in the most appropriate media. As always, the successful business models need to show creative use of the best options.