Do publishers have the stomach to do what’s really needed?
Both Clay Shirky and Kent Anderson (who does a masterful job of illuminating Shirky's original "Complexity" argument in the clip below) expose what's really happening in the great 21C media shakeout. It's an argument I'm familiar with and it's an argument I've been trying to make for some time - media (or more specific to my case, magazine publishing) is not being threatened by shifting output formats, but by an inability to adapt and shrink.
As shifting technology makes a once necessary operational complexity more of an albatross, publishers simply do not have the either the awareness or the stomach to re-imagine their organizations as significantly smaller, inherently agile, media operations.
As a result it makes no difference how slick devices like the iPad are, or how they provide a more controlled, billable content environment - if publishers insist on feeding it with a complex, bloated, press oriented supply chain they will always be vulnerable to digitally native start-ups.
Shirky’s argument is that cultural fossilization, with strata upon strata of useless practices preserved and treasured inside an organization or in a community of pratice, is a major component of failure, aside from technological changes and innovations. It’s very similar to Clayton Christensen’s disruptive technologies argument, but focusing on the management trap in an grand way.
Quality will always have a place in the market, there is no doubt. That doesn’t mean that the bureaucracies that have grown up around old media can remain in place, will continue to add value, or are important. In fact, they may be exactly what we must excise, simplify, rethink, and shorten case-by-case to avoid a meltdown of media culture on a larger scale. In some cases, good things can be made with very little or no apparent bureaucracy.
Read more at scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org
Leave a comment