It’s received wisdom that media companies are change resistant and vulnerable to disruption. This is a narrative that’s decades old now.
It’s not true. In the battle for economic success, there are always winners and losers. But as an industry we’re assuredly still standing. In niche, B2B, and consumer-enthusiast markets, the media brands that serve those markets are nearly always the dominant voice, nearly always the go-to source of engaging and reliable information. This certainly applies to association media as well.
Looking back over the last 30 years, we’ve:
- Withstood the rise of the commercial internet, and pivoted accordingly, from print to a multichannel approach. Media adapted and subsumed the new channel instead of finding itself withering on the vine.
- Withstood the initial (and imbecilic) internet business model that relied on free content. “Content wants to be free,” went the slogan, so hyperlinks could be leveraged for traffic.
- Withstood the rise of mobile.
- Seen the rise of data, and the rise and then fall of the “pivot to video.”
- Proved resilient even in the face of a really radical change in human behavior: The emergence of social media.
- Adapted to search and for a long time, leveraged it into traffic, and in turn, into advertising.
Because of that, we’ve developed new ways to engage readers. Now, search is changing with the arrival of AI and the use of summaries and not links. And here we are fighting off the effects of “GoogleZero.” The early indicators are positive.
Anyway, what got me to thinking about all of this was an article I saw in InPublishing, the U.K. media brand that covers the media industry. It’s a compelling case study in innovation, and I think it’s worth a read. Creativity is percolating all around us.