State of the Media

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Newsweek just published an article predicting the death of user-generated content. It points out that the reading public is getting leery of the amateur content on the net and is looking for third-party validation.

In the tech world, we've gotten used to being able to throw up contributed articles at little or no cost on what remains of our media. The DesignLine sites at TechInsights were created for exactly that as were IB Systems, SoC Central and Extension Media. Objective journalism is the loss leader in this model. But the ability to differentiate between data and information has always been the hallmark of real journalism. Which was also the subject of an interview on DACzine this week. In that interview by Ed Sperling, the engineers at first were saying they can get whatever information they need from tradeshows and contributed articles, but at the end they had to admit they they no longer have the time or ability to actually filter the information for truth.

The only answers we have folks is to either start advertising again or start paying journalists directly to pick your information apart.

Industry in denial

I got a few emails today asking to confirm the possibility that Reed is hiring a replacement to Mike Santarini. At the basis of this rumor is the belief that Santarini was let go because he pissed off too many mucky mucks in EDA and Reed, in an act of contrition, fired the journalist.

If that was true, then why let go of Maury Wright, Alan Robinson and Barbara Couchois?

Here's the scoop: Print advertising revenues are dropping, even though readership is climbing. Readers don't pay for the magazine. Advertising does. Even though online revenues are climbing, they are still only a fraction of the whole. You remember the writers' strike? Guess what is the cash cow for Reed? Variety magazine, which gets a whole bunch of money from advertising for the Golden Globes, Peoples Choice and Oscar awards season. That didn't happen this year because of the writers' strike. Add to that the declining revenue in tech advertising and you have a perfect financial storm.

Right now, Reed is in a hiring freeze right now as they court potential buyers for the RBI division, of which EDN is a part. No one is being hired to do anything. If Mike's primary beat -- Electronic Design Automation (EDA) -- is going to get coverage, it will be in the spare time of the remaining EDN staff.

The people spreading this rumor are in the EDA industry, which is trying to figure out why no one in the media likes them anymore. Rather than take responsibility for killing their own media by not supporting it, they are trying to lay the blame on the messengers.

EDA companies say they want the media to perform the same kind of analysis and insight they had 10 years ago, but they don't want to pay the cost of having qualified journalists perform the service. They say they are tired of seeing regurgitated press releases on websites, but they don't even pay for qualified communicators to craft those releases.

They're cheap. They've lost the ability to create anything truly innovative. They've lost the only way to really find out what the market wants. They crow about a 2 percent growth potential in the next year, that's going to have to be cut because their customers are cutting their estimates.

Time to wake up an smell the coffee. Get it straight, folks. Your media is dying because you are no longer supporting it. You've created an unholy mess by demanding something for nothing and now you are getting exactly what you deserve.

Chris Edwards tells it like it is.

Chris Edwards does a pretty good analysis in his blog of the financial history of CMP up to the recent reorganization announce last week. He also gets into some predictions regarding the future of the electronics industry as it faces the prospect of not having a free press to help promote itself and act as an objective observer.

This is a good introduction to what I'm going to be writing and talking about this month here in State of the Media. We are at a crucial moment in history and whether industry as we know it survives is in the balance. We can't rely on someone else to get us out of this mess. We're all going to have to pull together. Get ready.