Remember when the media was a great business to be in? Thanks to the digital revolution, that’s all changed. So what now?
“For 300-plus years, it was great for the audience, they got free and subsidised content. It was great for advertisers ‘cos they got audience. And it was great for media, ‘cos they got filthy stinking rich,” says Bob Garfield, former advertising man, veteran journalist and columnist, and co-presenter of the US National Public Radio program On the Media and co-host of the Slate podcast on language, Lexicon Valley.
But now, things are bleak. “Unless you are in gambling, search or porn, there’s just no money to be made,” he said.
Garfield was in Australia recently to keynote and moderate the media stream at the ADMA Global Forum. That’s the Association for Data-driven Marketing and Advertising, formerly the Australian Direct Marketing Association.
In this conversation with Corrupted Nerds, he explains why, basically, we’re all fucked.
This interview was recorded on 30 July 2014 in Sydney, Australia.
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Episode Notes
- On the Media podcast website.
- Bob Garfield’s biography at On the Media.
- Lexicon Valley podcast at Slate.
- From AdNews, Bob Garfield: Journalists, publishers, agencies and broadcasters are all fucked.
- My short piece Journalists, we are fucked, part of Media Briefs, Crikey, 29 July 2014.
- My Crikey story, ‘Con game’: native advertising only works when it’s hidden.
- ADMA Global Forum conference website.
- My Crikey story, Facebook manipulation yet more evidence of Silicon Valley’s contempt.
- Jay Rosen’s PressThink blog.
- Jay Rosen’s blog post The Beast Without a Brain: Why Horse Race Journalism Works for Journalists and Fails Us.
[Photo: Original photo of Bob Garfield via On the Media, not credited. Digital manipulation by Stilgherrian, available for re-use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license (CC BY-ND).]
Conversations 11: Bob Garfield on the future of media by Corrupted Nerds is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at https://corruptednerds.com/pod/c00011/