NewCommForum: How Web 2.0 is Revolutionizing Mainstream Media with Paul Gillin
This session opened with tape of the infamous "AOL cancellation call" where a consumer was trapped on the phone by an AOL employee who kept trying to talk him out of canceling his account. Paul Gillin talked about how the story started in the blogopshere and eventually made it on to the Today show and other traditional media.
The "new influencers" are changing the face of the media. Examples included
- Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped
- Mike Arrington of TechCrunch
- Drew Curtis of Fark.com
- Paige Heninger & Gretchen Vogelzang of MommyCast
- Craig Newmark of Craigslist.com ("this guy is single-handedly taking down the U.S. newspaper industry" according to Gillin)
These individuals achieve Paul also talked about the changing nature of media where sites like Digg get more traffic than the New York Times. How Craigslist took away $50M in business last year from Bay Area newspapers alone. Changing demographics mean even more change for the media.
He addressed patterns of influence and how the Internet is a great experiment in self-organization/self-governance. And it's working.
The traditional media must adapt to this new world, advises Gillin. Existing models are unsustainable. He claims within a decade or so major metro newspapers will fall apart, with the exception of the big boys (NYT, WSJ, etc.). "Social media will be the straw that breaks the camel's back" when it comes to newspapers. Not more than 5 newspapers will survive, but a handful of community newspapers (weeklies) will survive with new business models. Small metro dailies have no future.
New journalism focuses on outsourcing -- outsourcing of technology and content. "The entire staff of Digg could be hit by a bus and the site would keep running and traffic wouldn't be affected."
Getting mainstream media to accept comments, link out to other news sources, etc. is important. Media must reduce overhead and change their models.
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