Old Media in a Social World

12Oct09

I might never have known Rupert Murdoch was Australian if I hadn’t studied in Australia myself. As a student of media, he is one man always in my radar but I had assumed he was American or European (it’s the surname, really). Recently, he went to South Korea to take advantage of its media industry’s rapid deregulation and proposed plans with Samsung officials to sell content via broadband TV. Coincidentally, Intel recently declared its faith in a TV-driven future but Internet overtakes TV in advertising for the 1st time in UK. What does this mean for journalists and normal folks? How would the media’s future landscape look like in a social world? How long before Murdoch owns a bit of everything in media?

Newsweek: Murdoch accuses Google of stealing his content.

I’ve been a little wary of Newsweek’s blogs. Some of the bloggers are a little too biased IMO and sometimes do not provide a balanced POV in their writing but this article does it right (even if the tiny font size and skewed layout annoy). He asks a good question. Why doesn’t Murdoch stop Google from stealing content?

Because Murdoch knows he needs Google.

Murdoch understands that traditional media has to evolve in this social world and it needs new media in order to survive. As I had discussed before, the opinion that new media is a threat to traditional media is a mentality that needs to be abolished. It is plain to see that they need each other and their potential will be unleashed to its maximum when paired together. Murdoch knows this and he obviously understands the mentality that people are used to getting free content which is why he is working towards finding new ways of payment for journalism. The article from Mashable.com I cited above has got only one thing right IMO:

… smarter and leaner news organizations can get content out faster and cheaper than some of these old media outfits. They can try to charge people for content, but then they risk the competition swooping in at a new opportunity. The problem is not as clear cut as Rupert Murdoch and Tom Curley believe it to be, and the price for that oversight could be dramatic.

*

An interesting tidbit: Google claims that its project to ‘e-book’ everything is about preserving human knowledge. Half of me (the idealistic me) wants to believe that Google wants the best for our future generation but the other part of me (cynical and jaded) is this close to saying something like, “Yeah right.”

Isn’t it the same as stealing content? Where is the line drawn? Copyright? IDK about others but I love the feeling of holding my published work and reading it from my hands, the feeling is incredible. So print media, as selfish as it sounds, please don’t die on me. I mean, does no one care for hard cover books anymore?

Also, another interesting food for thought: 4 things old media can learn from the music industry. I love Mashable for its wide variety of writers and topics. Its layout leaves much to be desired but placement wise, it’s pretty smart and for the massive amount of information it provides, beggars can’t be choosers. Also, it has some of the fastest news breaks and its active Twitter account is one reason why I’m so updated with it.

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: bbc, journalism, mashable.com, media, newsweek, nytimes