Content Marketing Today

While the Mediasaurus Struggles to Survive, Replace Their Content with Yours!

Your company should become the new trusted publishing source.

The late Michael Crichton was early but eerily prescient with his 1993 prediction of the demise of traditional media.  He may have overstated the case but the recent spate of newspaper and magazine death and near-death experiences support his gloomy vision.

His forecast and today’s reality reinforces the need for every business to begin replacing media content with their own content.  Buyers want to go directly to the source for unfiltered information.  Your company can become that reliable information source.

Crichton made some wickedly appropriate comparisons of traditional media to dinosaurs.

In the1993 issue of Wired magazine he alluded to his successful book and movie, Jurassic Park: “But I want to focus on another dinosaur, one that may be on the road to extinction. I am referring to the American media. And I use the term extinction literally. To my mind, it is likely that what we now understand as the mass media will be gone within ten years. Vanished, without a trace.”

In that article, he shared his conviction that the decline in the quality of journalism had destroyed the trust that readers and viewers had formerly provided traditional media.  Although the explosion of information on the World Wide Web was several years away, he was correct that we would be able to bypass media filters to get right to the information we want

I want direct access to information of interest to me, and increasingly, I expect to get it. This is a long- standing trend in many technologies. When I was a child, telephones had no dials. You picked up the phone and asked an operator to place your call…Today’s media equivalent of the old telephone operator is Dan Rather, or the front page editor, or the reporter who prunes the facts in order to be lively and vivid. Increasingly, I want to remove those filters, and in some cases I already can.

In recent weeks and months print publications that once thrived as reliable information sources for consumers or business people have disappeared, gone on life support or moved to web only versions.  The latest casualty is PC Magazine which sported 500 to 600 page issues in its heyday. My most recent issue had a 130 page folio with a dearth of the ads and consequently a dearth of content.  Among other recent casualties:

• U.S. News & World Report–dropping first to biweekly and now to monthly frequency
• eWeek (known as PC Week in its glory days in the 1990s) became pathetically thin and then retreated exclusively to the Web
• Home Magazine with 3.5 million readers shut down in October after drastic ad revenue declines
• Christian Science Monitor– no longer existing in print
• International Herald Tribune– soon to be dead and gone

Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp. echoed Crichton’s sentiments in a November 16, 2008 CNet news report on his comments at a lecture series in Australia :

“It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what was news–and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened,” Murdoch said. “Today, editors are losing this power. The Internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren’t satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog, and cover and comment on the news yourself. Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, but they haven’t always responded well when the public calls them to account.”

Take advantage of this essential, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to deliver trusted information without a media filter

Crichton foresaw 15 years ago that fundamental changes would threaten traditional media.  Murdoch has added his contemporary voice, validating that Mediasaurus prediction. Both the shrinkage of traditional media outlets and their declining credibility now provide opportunities to connect directly to your buyers with credible and compelling content.