local media blog

Here are the trends Godin talked about during his Meatball Sundae presentation.

1. Direct communication – if you have a phone tree, you’re behind the curve.

2. Amplification of consumers – everyone is a critic and has the ability to share their critiques with 1 or 1 million people easily.

3. Authentic stories -being the brand you say you are (can’t give different messages to different groups).

4. Speed – if you’re competition is faster, they win.

5. Long Tail – Amazon gets 1/2 their revenue on books that Barnes and Noble doesn’t even carry. Choice creates new audience.

6. Outsourcing – if certain costs go to zero, you can change the business you’re in.

7. Dicing of everything – Google molecularized the Internet. You don’t have one front door anymore.

8. Infinite Channels – to talk about what you do and if you don’t like any of them you can create your own.

9. Consumer to Consumer – no middle man.

10. Scarce & Abundant – the two have flipped-flopped in some cases and if what you sell used to be scarce (NEWS) and now it’s abundant, you need to change what you do or how you do it because things in abundance don’t make money.

11. Big Ideas – is the product.

12. Permission – collect people who want to hear from you every day and complain when they don’t. Daily Candy is a good example.

13. The New Rich – what people are willing to spend money on today is surprising.

There were 14 but I missed one. If someone knows the 14th trend, please share.

Godin’s theory in summary — Carve out your niche by connecting people to each other.

Some examples: threadless.com, replacements.com, zappos.com.

I’m listening to Seth Godin’s lecture on his new book, Meatball Sundae.

He just summed up why the yellow pages book industry, Sotheby’s in auctions and AOL in social networking missed the boat: “They all rested on their laurels and refused to give up the old for the new.”

By now everyone knows the second LA Times editor in as many years has quit over a disagreement in how to manage resources. Specifically, Editor Jim O’Shea refused to make more cuts to the Times newsroom.

In his farewell memo, Mr. O’Shea crystallizes the growing problem for newspapers today in terms of quality journalism and what our profession was originally constructed to achieve and can still achieve — given the appropriate resources.

I especially like these two grafs:

This company, indeed, this industry, must invest more in solid, relevant journalism. We must integrate the speed and agility of the Internet with the news judgment and editorial values of the newsroom, values that are more important than ever as the hunger for news continues to surge and gossip pollutes the information atmosphere. Even in hard times, wise investment — not retraction – is the long-term answer to the industry’s troubles. We must build on our core strength, which is good, accurate reporting, the backbone of solid journalism, the public service that helps people make the right decisions about their increasingly complex lives.

We must tell people what they want to know and – even more important — what they might not want to know, about war, politics, economics, schools, corruption and the thoughts and deeds of those who lead us. We need to tell readers more about Barack Obama and less about Britney Spears. We must give a voice to those who can’t afford a megaphone. And we must become more than a marketing slogan. I know I can rely on this newsroom to do this.

I don’t think it’s naive to follow a strategy that achieves both the solid journalism O’Shea refers to AND strengthens our online products and grows audience everywhere people want news and information.

But, if our product is nothing but smut, gossip and pandering to the lowest common denominator I’m afraid the audience growth will be minimal. I’m even more afraid of what would happen to our society if we continue down the slippery slope and do not invest in good news judgment and editorial values.

I listened to the free Dow Jones’ InfoPro Alliance Webinar on Folksonomies & Taxonomies on Jan. 10. Here’s the event archive link.

Couple of observations:

1. We as media companies should adopt Webinars as a great way to communicate and teach our markets about new things to help us change the perception that we are just a newspaper.

2. I don’t know how many people were on the call but the moderator made note that there were people from all over the world. So, tagging isn’t a passing fad.

3. The target audience for this Webinar was large companies and how companies can use tagging or folksonomy to organize their internal information as well as communicate with their external audiences.

4. We as media companies need to use the technology available in however ways it’s available if only just to be OUT THERE experimenting.

5. How many of us have profiles where tagging is the way to organize information?

Here’s my list:
del.icio.us
Facebook
This blog
JTOlympians.com (drupal)

I’m sure there are others but this is a good start. I also have social networking profiles on:
LinkedIn
Twitter
YouTube
Flickr

What does your digital footprint look like? To Sean Polay’s point, if you were looking for a job in digital media could you say honestly that you walk the walk?

But, that’s a whole different post, I guess. My point is that we need to play where the world is playing even if our immediate market is not yet aware that world exists.

When I was in the Navy, we had a description for people who had been in the military for more than five years: The Walking Dead. I swear, they had dead eyes. How did that happen? Years of being beaten into submission, not physical beatings but emotional and intellectual. These men and women would suggest something, and the “leaders” would thank them and do nothing. After a while, the troops stopped making suggestions and just did the bare minimum to reach retirement.

I see dead eyes when I look at our newsrooms and our ad departments today. How many of you have heard co-workers say aloud, “I’m just waiting for retirement”? I’ve heard it multiple times and I really can’t blame them. If I knew I was not coachable and not interested in learning, I’d want to retire as well.

Of course the problem is that while those people wait for retirement the world marches on without us.

In a recent Steve Outing column, he makes suggestions on how to breathe life into newsrooms. I think some of those suggestions can work provided the walking dead are not completely dead and you can find some way to spark their interest and engage them once again. Some people won’t make it and those folks should just do everyone a favor and retire now or find another career.

For my part, I try and stay optimistic. Make the technology fun. Show, don’t tell, reporters and editors how they can use the technology to do what they do best — tell the community’s stories. Over my career, I like to think I’ve resuscitated a few people. And, I hope to continue to affect positive change.

After all, if the US Navy can change that culture and IBM can change its culture and numerous other industries and big companies can change, there’s no reason why we can’t!

Anyone who wants to know the key to success and leadership should read this article about Bill Belichick.