David Carr has a good post this morning in the New York Times called The Fall and Rise Of Media.
The post starts out with the old way of the media business. Kids would come to NYC out of school and work in marginal jobs in the hopes of getting a break and joining the "velvet rope" of mainstream media.
And the post ends describing what kids do today:
Somewhere down in the Flatiron, out in Brooklyn, over in Queens or up
in Harlem, cabals of bright young things are watching all the
disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and
iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more
informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two
decades ago. And they are ginning content from their audiences in the
form of social media or finding ways of making ambient information more
useful. They are jaded in the way youth requires, but have the
confidence that is a gift of their age as well.
David has it about right. I've watched this transformation and helped to finance it (and his first job in NYC too at Inside.com but that's a different story). I believe the move from a velvet rope model to a meritocracy is a good thing and that the new media business we are building in the wake of the old one will be a better media business; leaner, faster, and controlled more by users than media moguls.
I realize that the change is gut wrenching and many have lost jobs and careers in the process. I don't celebrate that. In fact, I find it upsetting. But I have also watched many reinvent themselves and come out in a better place too. Change is inevitable and we are better off embracing it than fighting it.
As David says, "It’s a wan reminder that all reigns are temporary". This one will be as well. So let's get on with it.
