Mike Butcher on How Digital Media Screwed the Media Business at the PSFK Conference London

This 20 minute video from the PSFK Conference London 2007 presents journalist Mike Butcher as he talks about how media owners are on a race for survival against technology companies that put the power to publish in the hands of the ‘audience.’

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A full transcript of this speech can be found here on Mike’s site.Main Notes (by Lynette Webb)

• Mike spoke at the beginning about industrial revolution uprisings and how the initial ones (eg: Pentridge uprising of 300 people) failed because people didn’t have ways to communicate and organise fast. Then the printing press was developed leading to Pamphlets which were read out to people in reading groups… a cheaper, faster means for information exchange & social discourse, with the result that 60k people turned up at Peterloo protest. Now that enough people are online we have “Digital Pamphlets”, blogs etc which is yet another improvement in making cheaper/faster
• Classified ads are becoming self organising - eg: craigslist, freecycle, facebook marketplace
• Not only Google going after traditional classified market of newspapers, but new startups- Nestoria, wayn etc.
• Old media is growing but not leading anymore. Old media does not have a god given right to survive, it has to earn it’s audience… BUT politics and culture are always better when people are infomed… ???Is the future smaller publishing houses / A-list bloggers being distributed via new old media incarnations???
• Nice chart showing falling revenues from traditional media (line on top sloping down) and rising revenues of new media (line underneath sloping up), with a Black Hole where the two meet, because no-one knows yet whether new media revs will be enough to offset losses from old media.

Attendee Comments

Andrew Hovells summed his learnings as:

Then is was the turn of Mike Butcher to talk about the effect of digital media on traditional media. Here’s a transcript of his speech, but there are some salient points that struck home with me. A new media turning things upside down is nothing new. The onset of print allowed insurgents to distribute information and organise in ways they never had before. Information of power - the greater its distribution, the greater the sharing of power and authority.

Press simply has a smaller, cheaper and quicker competitor to deal with now - online. Like the way Craigslist totally undermines paid for classified advertising (so does Ebay). Now old media may be dealing well in parts, like Guardian Online, but it isn’t leading the way, at best it’s part of it.

We’re going to see the old media continually squeezed by the new technical behemoths like Google, and the little niche start ups from the other side. It suggests a new model for media - take part and we’ll give you the space. Maybe the new model is less power at the top and more stuff coming up from the people on the ground. That bottom up theme again.

George Nimeh said:

Mike Butcher’s talk was good. He’s always got great examples and insight into the changing landscape that digital is forcing on the traditional media business, and today was no exception.

The AdLads key takeaway was:

Digital media is the pamphlet from the Pentrich Revolution of our era. Media owners must change their practices in the face of cheaper digital startups and user-centric publishers.

Come listen to more inspiring speakers at the PSFK Conference Los Angeles on September 18 2007 in West Hollywood - psfkla.eventbrite.com.