Reflecting on recent turmoil in the executive suites at AOL, Newscorp and CBS Interactive, John Battelle sees an industry grappling to find itself in the brave “New Media” world.
Here’s what he believes the big guys are thinking:
1. Interactive is now a very important, profitable, and growing business.
2. We can’t afford to not view this as strategic to our future.
3. We need someone running theses sites who is not an interactive “cowboy,” it’s time to grow up and treat it like any other major piece of our conglomerated business.
4. Therefore, I need “one of my own” running these businesses, and I expect them to deliver just like the folks who run my radio, TV, print, and/or other major asset groups.
5. “One of my own” is someone who lives and breathes my world – the world of Very Large Media Companies that Own A Boatload Of Intellectual Property Assets and have Massive Investments In Huge, Controlled Distribution Networks.
Battelle, of course, is a former magazine editor and publisher, now deep in the middle of an important “New Media” play.
In his post, he ponders how “Big Media” execs will juggle their “Old Media” responsibilities, while simultaneously investing in new “Social Media” projects. It seems to me, experts in logic are needed–men and women capable of holding multiple, competing ideas in their minds. People who can play poker with one hand and chess with the other.
