Old Media Vs. New

When thinking about old media and the distinguishing characteristics, it is important to look back at the origins of media production and publishing with the inventions of the printing press, typewriter, word processor, as Andrew Savikas does in Forbes.com's Feb. 19, 2009 article "Media: Don't Fear New Technologies".  What we see now as "new media" is merely a magnification of these technological innovations due mainly to Moore's Law, a booming economy, and new, less expensive ways to produce content of all sorts, from self publishing books, to streaming video and audio content, to blogs, wikis, and the like.  New Media has simply flooded the marketplace with free content that the old media resources were formerly relied on to produce.  Despite the lack of editorial support, and well mastered production skills in some cases, new media has flourished due to its low overhead and high demand.  Another factor that is often overlooked, is the "democratization of information" that we hear about so often as a supporting argument for free content, is no longer being vetted, edited, and marketed in such a way as to produce reliably researched/sourced, high quality content.  As a result, old media sources such as newspapers for example who have been slow to respond to changes in the market landscape have suffered in many cases unrecoverable losses.  The New York Times' owners for example have been for years forced to take losses on the paper in order to ensure high quality reporting and editorial content because of trusts established ironically in order to secure the paper's long term survival.  New Media's have changed the market so significantly and permanently as to make that type of organizational model obsolete.  Looking at video streaming websites, or audio download sites, as a result of rushing to fill demand in the marketplace, no business models for distribution were ever planned or laid out, it all just happened with the consumer driving taste, marketing, and trends.  Traditionally, these industries have always controlled their own destiny through manipulating consumer's tastes and ideas about content and innovation.  As the authors describe 'Tapping into a world of talent' section of McKinseysQuarterly.com article "Eight Business Technology Trends to Watch", in December, 2007, new media content is more and more being produced and provided by free agents and outsourced talent making the market incredibly competitive without any real means to an end in long term strategy.  That's always been a problem with technological improvements in information delivery systems and in the most recent cases has led to piracy, mediocre content, and collapse of many traditional media outlets that have been forced to compete with completely unregulated internet based businesses.