Comment on Belmont's "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil"
In "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" is a discussion of "the growing competitiveness of the blogs with mainstream media in certain respects."
I'm not sure that in-depth blog reports or unedited video will ever have the mass appeal of slickly packaged print and video products which are simplified so that they can be digested at a glance or reduced into a single memorable soundbite. There's a real market in content-reduced information as the Reader's Digest well knew, and that segment will probably remain alive and well.However, the low cost of entry into Internet publishing makes it possible for authors to create specialty publications which can effectively reach their audiences. Whether that's good or bad is the subject of debate. David Ignatius, writing in the Washington Post argues that unfiltered content, no longer moderated by the Gatekeepers, may be a dangerous and loose cannon. ... What do you think?
Here's what I thought:
Part of what makes the blogsophere such a perplexing challenge for mainstream media is this: it is not easily amenable to analysis using standard strategic management theories and analytical frameworks.Consider, for example, the problems that arise when one uses the most widely taught strategic management framework, Michael Porter’s Five Forces , to get a handle on the competitive threat posed by blogs.
In short, Porter’s theory posits that the determinants of profitability in an industry are explained by five "forces"- the power of suppliers; the power of buyers; barriers to entry; the degree of rivalry among incumbents; and the presence of substitutes.
When I say that blogs are perplexing, it is not just because they don't fit neatly into any one of those five classes of determinants. The real problem, as I see it, is that they fit into all of them, at the same time.
Blogs are new entrant, substitute, complement, and rival. They offset much of the power the MSM has traditionally had over its both buyers and its suppliers. Were blogs just any one of these things, they could be easily be squashed, co-opted, or marginalized. But they are not.
You don’t see challenges and challengers like this everyday. Once in a generation or two is probably more like it. And this is why blogs are rage-enablers too: having to fight such a diffuse, rapidly-growing, and potent set of threats is making executives and journalists at many quasi-monopolistic, mainstream media organizations very, very angry.
None of this is to say that the “threat” posed by blogs can’t be met. Adaptation, reconfiguration, and hybridization can and will occur. Some firms will see the silver lining and recognize the opportunity inherent in what they have, up to then, considered threatening. For others, their wooly-headed thinking on this matter will see them go the way of the wooly mammoth.