How can we survive and thrive in the new media landscape?

The same things that saved us in the old media environment will save us in the new media environment.

Hi friends,

People talking about the massive disruption happening in media right now are missing an important bit that we ignore at our peril, which is that large media companies exist, in essence, to work as curators of culture for their audience.

They seem to have all forgotten this fact, but aside from massive overvaluation by venture capital, private equity, or opportunistic oligarchs, the throughline connecting every media company struggling right now is they have become terrible curators for their audience.

Whether it’s a newspaper, magazine, publisher, TV station, record label, movie studio, etc, the thing they are doing, above anything else, is holding something up and saying “This is worth your attention”.

They are sifting through millions and millions of data points to find the ones they think their audience will like the most. Sometimes, they find a hit, but even when they miss the mark, you can see their curation all over the things they choose.

The better you curate, the st…