Networked on islands or in archipelagos
In the digital world, everyone is connected to everyone else. While this is technically true, it rarely plays out that way in reality. Within the network, pockets of like-minded people form—even in the media industry. What gets neglected in the process is critical distance, contact with those who think differently, and a view of the bigger picture. The consequences can be disastrous, even for the media industry. By Josefa Haas, Director of the Media Institute.
Newspaper makers follow the developments of the New York Times, Der Spiegel and the Guardian with fascination. The magic words are paid content and paywalls. There is no question that observing the big players in the industry is indispensable and inspiring. However, it is then once again necessary to do the math in the relevant markets for Swiss media providers. In order to build up critical sizes in the journalistic market, the experts must not retreat to their islands. What is needed is an open, critical debate among all market participants. An industry needs a common understanding of the performance of its products and their monetization. This is the only way for professional journalism to attract the attention of a large audience in the long term, which in turn provides an ideal environment for advertising messages. Today, the media landscape is split into a multitude of islands, each of which wants to invent the media industry for itself. Talking to readers who are independent of the industry reveals how little the strategies of media companies are linked to the experiences and needs of users. No one has yet been able to plausibly explain why they had to pay for regional media until a few years ago, but in the meantime have received practically all content on the web for free and are now encountering payment barriers again. The reason for this is that media marketing has built up legends in its own community with which it achieved opinion leadership for a certain period of time. Despite convergence, the technical merging of all communication offerings and forms on one platform, new islands have formed. The feeling of togetherness is strengthened by common friends, enemies and certainties. Isolated, it is easy to live for a while free from the stress of dealing with criticism and dissenters. The dangers of operational blindness due to isolation can only be averted by opening up. The media industry would therefore do well to network its islands with those of its customers in the user market and advertising market, as they will ensure tolerable business in the future.
In the digital world, the focus is shifting to the individual person: in future, communication flows will be managed with ever more knowledge about their activities and data. In future, data will be the oil of the economy. Targeting is the magic word. We will become the target at which information weapons can fire their ammunition in a more targeted manner, to stick with the metaphor. However, it remains to be seen whether big data will really become big business. Facebook has suffered a major setback in its attempt to follow in Google's footsteps with regard to the successful commercialization of its service platform. Those who align their business model with the successful ones of today are already being overtaken by the future, as the network is only supposedly inexhaustible globally. The challenge is to find the islands where most of the relevant communication takes place and to network these in archipelagos to prevent isolation and inbreeding.
For Swiss media providers, this means focusing on building communities. With their journalistic offerings, they weave a web of information and interpretations. The population talks to them about the development of the region, political disputes, social developments, economic risks and opportunities. If the media succeed in connecting the islands to form archipelagos, then their business model will also be secure for the future.
