Question: What’s the way forward for a magazine like Fortune?Miller: I’m just a contributor to Fortune, so I’m not part of the, you know, the in-house workings, but, look, all the major media are going through this tremendous tumult know, as you know, and the economics of the internet have just changed everything. And so, I’m very bullish about ideas and content finding their audience, because we know that continues to happen. I think that there’s no question it’s going to fundamentally, you know, overhaul the delivery systems that we have for how we get content, and, you know, that’s displacing a lot of people already. I have lots of friends and colleagues I know who have felt the, you know, the sting of this from the cutbacks that different institutions, name brand institutions all over the place, are going through, and yet it’s, it will be interesting to see, you know… One of the things people always say about the media is that the media have always been unsympathetic to those who lose out from free trade because, you know, nobody’s outsourcing editors’ jobs. Well, now, people are outsourcing editors’ jobs and writers’ jobs and, you know, there’s a lot of things you can do all around the world. You’ve even, you know, you’re seeing reports about local papers. I think there’s one in Sacramento that has its reporting done by three people in India. Of course, they’re scouring the local listings and doing it, you know, at 1/20th of the price, and I think we have to be, it’s very disruptive for people. I think it will make the media more sympathetic to the losers from trade, which is something we actually need in the culture, and, you know, who know where it ends? I’m sure, at the end of this, there’ll be, you know, a whole new set of things going on. The one thing I worry about, I guess, is I don't know what we would do without something like the New York Times, for example. For all the ways that, you know, the Times, obviously, because it’s so powerful, has these enormous critics. Most of what, even the critics, most of what even the critics of the New York Times know about the world, they know it from the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal, or the Washington Post, and without these major national institutions investing in the reporting organizations they have around the world, there is a certain common base of knowledge that you wonder, you know, maybe they’ll just get reinvented in a more cost-effective fashion on the internet, under some of these brands, but it’s hard to know, it’s hard to know which way it goes, and I noticed yesterday, you know, just before we do this interview, the New York Times had its first ever front page ad at the bottom of the front page of the New York Times. Now, I’m not a purist. I’m not against ads in different parts of newspapers, but it was another marker of the times that the New York Times was selling a 2-inch ad along the bottom, you know, full page, 2 inch across the banner ad at the bottom, and I thought it was particularly ironic that it was a CBS ad. So it was, you know, it was an attempt by the New York Times, which is being killed by lack of advertising, with some ad bought by an entity that itself is seeking advertising in troubled times, so there’s some meta irony in that I’m sure, but I’m not smart enough to figure out what it is.
Discuss
Brad Morrison on March 2, 2009, 10:32 AM
I agree that, for established media outlets, the challenge is to refit their delivery systems. It is my opinion that print is already dead, but that the overwhelming majority of publishers continue to look for ways to represent data to justify distribution on paper.
In general, the world has already changed, but virtually all media producers refuse to acknowledge this. It appears that no large media firms—including entertainment media—are seriously seeking to objectively confirm that their existing delivery systems remain viable. Look at the money which continues to be wasted on the MPAA and the RIAA, for example. What is the value of suing individuals for copyright infringement when large population segments are habitually looking for free or at least cheap content? Unlike the more immediate nature of the financial markets, the information markets seem to be lagging behind in favor of an obsolete ideal. Simply put, lavish lifestyles are no longer part and parcel of a career in entertainment. News may be more precious than entertainment in the short term, but it does not enjoy the long tail of well produced film, television programming, or recorded music.
Regarding the outsourcing, even offshoring of local media coverage, I see this as viable in terms of information discovery. Certainly there is no substitute for local resources for the details and investigative components at this time. The fact remains that foreign resources are cheaper than local resources, however. If there really is such a thing as a global economy, it is willful ignorance alone which allows the idea that only American citizens can provide services to Americans.
I find it ironic that the moderator of one of the podcasts to which I regularly listen (KCRW’s “Left, Right, and Center”) is delivering this message via recorded video over the World Wide Web. Given the present state of electronic communications and the status quo demand for 24-hour news coverage, it is folly to presume the viability of high-paying, locallized positions for information delivery.
Open journalism is mentioned in this message, however, and this is a prime example of the need for accountable staff for any information provider. FOX News notwithstanding, unreliable news reporting is simply not sustainable. The tradeoff lies—as it always has—in balancing speed, cost, and accuracy. The computing industry has a well known maxim: “Speed, cost, quality: Pick any two.”
The main issue, then, is the innate cost-cutting nature of mergers. If newspapers continue to mass together, the cost of these conglomerations will take away from the quality of news. We are already seeing the negative effects of concentrated ownership of mass media. Coupled with the right’s “Liberal Media Bias” canard, it won’t be long until news is considered to be unreliable at face value.
That is, if it hasn’t already happened.
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