The Future of News - Steve Rosenbaum - MediaBizBloggers
Today is one of those days when the future seems remarkably clear. In fact, it feels to me like I can see around the bend and start to talk about the future of news with some certainty.
Take a look at the news sites that are gaining traction and you'll see that one of the fastest growing is Mediaite.com
If you haven't gone to take a look at Mediaite.com, take a moment and check it out, I'll wait.
It's the brainchild of Dan Abrams, one of the smartest and best known legal minds on television today. As an MSNBC host he was always able to keep conversations and subject matter smart and provocative. And there's no doubt that his TV gig was high profile and well paid. So why is he building content Web sites? More on that in a moment. Dan's right hand on content is Colby Hall, who also comes from the TV world. So, when you look at Mediaite.com, you see a channel that feels like it's being programmed (to use a TV term).
What you'll see at Mediaite is a site edited for media folks. People who care about TV, news, publishing and other new media related things. There's a top of the fold big story, sometimes written by Mediaite, sometimes a headline and a line from a major news organization or publication. Below the fold there are more links, more editorial, and more bloggers. Here too some staff, and some folks writing to the platform. Sound familiar? It's the Huffington Post model, but rather than politics, it's media. And it's spot on. Why? Because Abrams and his team 'get' media. They know what matters. They do fast, updated and edgy editorial. They curate what their audience is hungry for. And it works.
So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Dan Abrams was voted by FishbowlNY as the Most Influential New Yorker in 2009. Why? Because he's a guy with TV Mojo who has jumped into Web media feet first. By the way, Rupert Murdoch was second and Arianna Huffington was third. The site also hit on a gold mine by creating lists of Media folks called the Mediaite Power Grid. People love lists. It's kind of like a human stock market. Is Jeff Zucker up or down today? What about Ann Moore at Time Inc. or Andrew Ross Sorkin at the Times? It's like popcorn, addictive. And Abrams knows it.
What Abrams knows is that the future of content isn't about content creation, it's about content curation. Create, Collect, Curate - it's the new mantra of successful Web content destinations.
And Mediaite isn't the only site that's embracing the Collect, Create, Curate ethos. Dennis' publication The Week,and New YorkMagazine (winner of the Magazine Publisher Association's Digital Magazine of the Year award in 2009), are all about aggregation. And now video aggregation too. Three major media players, each embracing the new content mix. Its' what Arianna calls the Link Economy - but in fact is really more of the Curation Economy.
To be fair, we love these guys. We love them because they get curation. And we love them because we've partnered with them to bring a new revenue model to Web video. It used to be that you put video on your Web site and then crossed your fingers that you could sell the inventory. But those days are long gone. Now a positive ROI is critical for survival of a Web video solution. And being focused on performance brings a new seriousness to the space. Colby Hall, Managing Editor of Mediaite.com, explains it this way: "Magnify's lift is helping us drive new revenue, new visitors, and expanding our advertising options."
Ok, blush. But Media is about Curation and that's a mission I've believed in long before you could get anyone to spell curation.
"We've seen extraordinary growth in both page views and engagement in the past three months and there is no question the Aggregation and Curation tools from Magnify have been instrumental in helping to spur and power that growth."
The future of news can be found in the three C's. Create. Collect. Curate.
Repeat after me.
Steven Rosenbaum is the CEO and Co-Founder of Magnify.net - a fast-growing video publishing platform that powers more than 50,000 web sites, media companies, and content entrepreneurs to aggregate and curate web video from a wide variety of web sources. Currently Magnify.net publishes over 50,000 channels of Curated-Consumer Video, and is working closely with a wide variety of media makers, communities, and publishers in evolving their content offerings to include content created by, sorted and reviewed by community members. Rosenbaum is a serial entrepreneur, Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, and well known innovator in the field of user-generated media production. Rosenbaum Directed and Executive Produced the critically acclaimed 7 Days In September, and his MTV Series Unfiltered is widely regarding as the first commercial use of Consumer Generated Video in US mass media. Steve can be contacted at steve@magnify.net Follow Steve Rosenbaum on Twitter: www.twitter.com/magnify
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