Buzzfeed, Vice, Vox Media, nbc, ESPN, National Geographic and the Washington Post announced cuts in their payrolls in 2023. This phenomenon has created the idea that the sector is in crisis, however, the data shows the opposite. The confusion stems from the definition of what a medium is. Historically, the medium was defined by the conduit that delivered the message. That is to say, the Radio and the Broadcasting Company were understood to be half indistinctly. Actually, the first is the medium and the second is the company that generates content through the medium. This confusion was amplified with the arrival of the Internet, the same Radio Broadcaster generates content for YouTube and its Internet portal. In the first it competes with TV and the second with a newspaper. Far from a crisis, we are experiencing media integration. We are facing a change in the means of transmission, the digitization of content.
Additionally, content creators: radio stations, newspapers, TV production companies, magazines, have become multiplatform content generators. On this path, they now compete with everyone who generates content. In the same way that an 18th century watchmaker competes with an iPhone to deliver the time.
Now brands and consumers also compete to generate content and are, in the strict sense of the word, “media”. An influencer is now considered a content generator, but actually does what a few years ago was considered a medium. This implies a brutal growth in the media, there is more generation of content and the debacle of the media mentioned at the beginning is not due to the lack of advertisers or content consumers, it is due to the abundance of competition.
National Geographic laid off its payroll content generators. This indicates a desire to cut costs, but is also an acknowledgment that there is more content generation talent outside of the editorial desk. Decide to stop printing Process, is the admission that there is more traffic in the PDF version than in the physical one. This does not mean that print is a bad vehicle, the media that have been maintained report growth precisely because of this integration of the industry.
Another example is Kayak, a company dedicated to solving the purchase and planning of travel services. But it doesn’t just do that, the company offers content generation services, acts as a travel marketplace, media, and agency. As another example, Lowe’s is the leader in generating “How-to” content on YouTube.
The future of media
Content generators will be stronger to the extent that they have credibility and consistency. They will compete in their respective categories, sizes and scopes, as was the case years ago between newspapers or radio stations. The definition of the medium must be updated and be less dependent on the distribution vehicle. Today the error is repeated when referring to “Internet sites”, that is the medium, not the brand that generates content.
Social networks, YouTube or podcasts, they are all content, the vehicle changes but not the message. This poses the challenge of recognizing that traditional media are failing because of their inability to compete. Google, Facebook and many more are silent, blaming the death of Buzzfeed on the contraction of the ad market, when in fact it is the competition for the same ad dollars among more media. We are facing the democratization of advertising revenue.
Google seems to understand this better than others, the recently updated Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (EEAT) model that rates the quality of online content is the best signature of privileging relevance and quality online. The media must recognize that the competition of a Radio Broadcaster is an influencer in the same way that it is an online newspaper. They all compete for the attention of users.