Predicting New Media? Are you kidding me!!

When looking at the media and the internet you can either say your glass is half full or half empty. The analyst in the Paidcontent.org article is clearly only looking at one side of a very large equation which we discussed last week. I think to look at a trend that is currently taking place and project it over a 30 year time period is pretty ambitious. 30 years ago no one would have dreamed the newspaper or television business would be losing its customers to a computer. Computers were large machines only big business could afford.

Meanwhile Stepp's piece looks at what to do next - the way I believe so many in our industry are doing right now. While some television stations are jumping ship (KEYE's morning news) others are trying to embrace the new way viewers are choosing to consume media. I appreciated his first section on the time constraints put on journalists because of new media. It has made our lives become double sided by still having to produce our traditional news stories for television while at the same time shoot video, still pictures, and post a different version of the story to the website - all within the same 8 hours we were working before.

You either beat 'um or your join 'um, and in an age where viewers are saying we need more, I agree with Stepp that you need to give it to them. While his bullet point list of ideas have been talked about and implemented by others many times before, I think its important to reiterate the fact that trying something outside the mold of journalism isn't a bad idea. If it fails you drop it, if it works then alright you found a new outlet.

While analysts like to predict years into the future, I feel this is one time period where you need to focus on whats working now to determine if it has legs to last a long time. Predicting 30 years into the future for media is a task no one should tackle right now.