Out With A Bang

We’ve been round the block with the NUJ before. And I’m under few illusions as to the monumental challenges it faces in trying to protect the interests of its members – one of whom is my Mrs.

But at some stage it has to acknowledge that there are forces at work here that are wholly beyond the control of ITV, of Sly Bailey, of OfCom, of NewsQuest, of JohnstonPress, of John Fry and each and every other ‘Press Baron’ stroke ‘Establishment’ figure and institution that is currently passing across its sights…

OfCom may not be perfect; it may have next to no ‘teeth’ but it has at least all but recognised that the dam has burst… that the audience (and with them the advertisers…) has flooded off elsewhere.

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=42106

So while I fully appreciate that the Union has to man the barricades; has to make a fight of it… there are certain realities that, to my mind, remain under-addressed.

‘Ofcom’s proposals for the future of public broadcasting “set in train the destruction of local and regional news on ITV”, according to the National Union of Journalists…

What set in train the destruction of local and regional news was Sir Tim Berners-Lee playing with his PC deep beneath some Swiss hill-side…

After that we were all doomed to meet our maker. Yes, there are all manner of structual and cyclical challenges that the traditional media industry failed to address, met too late, etc, etc….

But I have yet to have find anyone out there with a definitive answer as to either where or when ‘old media’ missed the boat – or, more importantly, what it could have ever have done to save itself.

There is another ‘culprit’ in this; one that barely gets a mention. But should. And that’s what once was ‘the audience’.

Because the fact of the matter is that while we all squabble and point fingers of blame at eachother, they’ve all f*cked off without us. They’ve formed their own means of entertainment; their own channels of news absorption – that has absolutely nothing to do with watching Claire Weller at 6.30pm every Tuesday night.

Or, indeed, waiting for a paper boy to show at 5.30pm.

Witness backpackdave08.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=143

For a whole generation out there, backpackdave08 is the new Kevin Piper; the new Stuart White.

And that has nothing to do with OfCom, with Michael Grade, with Sly Bailey, with whoever…

The Intenet set our former audience free.

For all of us whose careers and families were tied to ‘old media’ it ’set in train’ a forest fire of unimagineable ferocity; one that, even now, has yet to reach its peak.

The trick for the NUJ is to start to spot and nurture those first green shoots of new growth; to batter down the doors of the people like NESTA who – despite being charged with ‘making innovation flourish’ – find something like MyLocalWriter ‘beyond their area of expertise and experience…’

That’s the gauntlet that lies at their feet. Where next?

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