Every Company Is A Media Company

A Podcast on Every Company is a Media Company....

By Tom Foremski

I recently spoke with Bob Walsh from 47 Hats, and Patrick Foley from Microsoft, about Silicon Valley Watcher and Every Company is a Media Company - EC=MC - the transformative equation for business. It is part of the Startup Success Podcast series.

Bob and Pat interview Tom Foremski, one of the foremost journalists covering Silicon Valley, the world of startups and the shifting sands under the feet of traditional media. Tom was one of the first top rank journalists to go solo and leave the sinking mainstream media ship. You’ll find his analysis of the coming media tsunami and why every company – including your startup – is now a media company nourishing food for thought.

Download Show #66 here: Show #66 Or if you prefer, Subscribe to the podcast in Apple iTunes.

The Media Is Dying, Long Live The Media - The Media Tsunami Is Coming...

By Tom Foremski

Did you know that the first printed books in England would leave a blank rectangle at the beginning of a chapter so that an illuminated capital letter could be written in?

It's a great example of a hybrid publishing system, and we can see the same, although in different forms, as publishers transition to an online model.

This example, and other aspects of publishing's evolution over millennia, can be found in an excellent article based on a presentation by Guardian.co.uk Information Architect Martin Beam:

Journalism in the digital age: trends, tools and technologies.

But really it has been the development of the World Wide Web over the last 15 years or so which has utterly transformed the publishing landscape in our era. For mainstream journalism this has meant vastly increased distribution. The UK's major newspapers now have audited global monthly audience figures measured in the tens of millions, at a time when printed circulation continues a long-term decline.

Yes, but there's the rub: readership going through the roof but revenues falling. Usually, when readership rises, so do newspaper revenues, but this is not the case now. Wisely, Mr Beam doesn't tackle the thorny issue, or as I prefer to call it, the Gordian knot of the new media business model.

Some Notes On Why Every Company Needs To Become A Media Company...

By Tom Foremski

With the demise of "mass media" the old rules of having a media presence have changed. Here are some notes on why companies need to develop some of the same skills that media companies have, in generating great media.

- Large companies have had an advantage in hogging the media limelight because of their large teams of corporate comms people and use of large PR agencies. They worked with a relatively small number of journalists in print, TV, and radio.

Over time those journalists were educated on the company/clients and it was possible to establish a large media presence across different platforms and channels.

- This traditional approach is fairly expensive and it takes many well paid professionals to create and maintain media relations. It's not something that was available to smaller companies.

- This traditional approach ensured a high quality media product such as an article in BusinessWeek, or a segment on a national news TV program, because the media was produced by large teams of media professionals.

- With the shrinkage in traditional media and it's ongoing challenges, this approach to building a media presence is much more difficult today. There are fewer media professionals to work with, and the ones that remain are overworked and have to do more with less.

Meeting Cisco's Head Of M&A And Realizing Every Company Is A Media Company

By Tom Foremski

After I left the Financial Times in mid-2004 to begin publishing Silicon Valley Watcher, I was worried that I wouldn't have the same access to top executives as I enjoyed at the FT.

I needn't have worried and soon found that I had the same, or even better access, because now I had built some notoriety by becoming the first journalist to leave a major newspaper to become a professional "blogger."

Intel held an emergency meeting by its corporate communications staff based on my leaving the FT, to discuss how they must now have a strategy of working with "bloggers."

I still thought of myself as a journalist, since as far as I was concerned, I was still writing the same type of stories I was writing at the FT. Just because I was using a blogging software platform, Movable Type to publish my stories, didn't make me a "blogger." But "blogger" was a scary word in those days as companies struggled to understand what this meant.

Interestingly, Intel held an emergency meeting when CNet's News.com was launched in the mid 1990s. The corporate communications team wondered if online news reporters should be treated the same as print reporters.

But it wasn't just Intel that struggled with such definitions, of who is or who isn't a journalist, all companies have, and many still do. Intel made the transition very quickly.

One of my first top interviews on Silicon Valley Watcher was visiting Cisco and meeting with Dan Scheinman, who was at the time, head of mergers and acquisitions at Cisco. This was one of the most powerful jobs in Silicon Valley because of the tremendous number of acquisitions Cisco was making -- and continues to make. (Here's the list.)

What was extra interesting about Mr Scheinman was that he was Director of Corporate Communications and head of acquisitions, spending billions of dollars a year.

Welcome - When Every Company Is A Media Company...

By Tom Foremski

Five years ago, when I first began writing and talking about this idea, that every company is a media company, few people understood what this was about. Today, it's a message that is better understood -- but only among a few leading practioners in media, communications, and marketing -- it's still far from being understood by the mainstream.

Yet today, it's a very important concept because the evolution of media, and the powerful media technologies of the Internet,  has transformed the entire media industry and is now transforming nearly every business.