Using the West Midlands, where he edits TheBusinessDesk.com, as a microcosm of the publishing and journalism industries in this post on the future shape of media, Marc Reeves concludes that the only constants right now are “perpetual revolution and reinvention”.
Reeves’ post intelligently dissects the problems facing both the ‘old guard’ of traditional media and the ‘new old guard’:
The economics that sit behind great media engines like News International, Trinity Mirror and ITV have changed forever, but – just like the recession – that change comes with a very long tail, and its effects therefore will be felt for a long time to come (…) many players think the only sensible action is to keep on fighting the same battles will the same weapons.
(…) Anyone comfortably settling themselves in for a long career as ‘web publisher’ had better get real. Print monopolies may have lived high on the hog for a couple of hundred years or so, but the equivalent timespan in web publishing is measured in months.
And this is the real problem for the ‘old guard’. When they eventually get what the internet really means for their business, they’ll be seduced into thinking they’ve swapped the old certainties of print for the new certainties of digital.