We saw this headline on Monday, and knew we needed to put it in the tickler file. It came first from Bosacks’ outstanding media-focused newsletter, a long-running staple for many in the industry.
“Bo Sacks Speaks Out: Publishers Must Reclaim Their Sovereignty”
It’s a provocative notion, but one we all understand—to a greater or lesser extent—intuitively. We live in a time of massive disruption in media, a period of decline and business distress for legacy media operators, challenged from one side by the rise to near dominance of upstart blogs, influencers, and podcasts, and on the other by the giant tech platforms. This part has intensified in the last 16 months, with the rise of AI-assisted search, where on-page summaries have nearly replaced the traditional links to direct sources—like the media.
Anyway, Bo was picking up from a terrific essay by The Rebooting’s Brian Morrissey, where he explained the challenge. Essentially, it’s a gradual loss of agency that has over time become acute, threatening the survival of media businesses.
Essentially Morrissey and Bo say, sovereignty consists of:
- Distribution: Control your borders.
- Monetization: Keep your ad rights.
- Creator autonomy: Don’t allow outside influences and pressures to force you to cede control of your editorial voice.
There’s, much, much more to it than this, and I couldn’t (and shouldn’t) try to explain it all here. Start with Brian’s essay. Then check out the argument as filtered through Bo’s unique worldview.