Media, deconstructed

For people like me, media's in the blood. There's something compelling about news, feature stories, and comments that make you think. Then there's the buzz you get from publishing a story, a quality product, or starting a new conversation.

I'm one of the speakers at Ross Dawson's Future of the Media Summit, being held simultaneously (ie connected across the net) in Sydney and San Francisco (my two favourite cities) on 18/19 July. If you don't know about the summit, check out the event's site, or Ross' blog. Btw, this ain't no dinky event. Speakers include Wired's Chris Anderson, Technorati's Dave Sifry, and Fairfax Digital's CEO Jack Matthews.

On the agenda are some pretty familiar topics: globalisation, how content will be created, future revenue models, and so on. There's an argument to be made that media has been deconstructed and separated into its basic elements - content, community, revenue models, etc. Just look at the rise and rise of separate online job sites, or classifieds businesses. Likewise, blog-style media outfits like Alwayson, or Crikey, are carving out a niche as sources of "independent" information.

So one question in my mind is to what extent are we simply deconstructing old media, calling it new media, and then putting it back together in slightly different fashion? That's my cynical Aussie view of the world. The happier (Californian) view says citizen, or community-driven media is a refreshing change and a noble pursuit for all forms of media.

Got any thoughts?

Comments

[Cameron Reilly]

only that I posted a commen to Ross' blog a couple of weeks ago asking how he could seriously position this conference as being about new media without hardly ANYONE who is genuinely "new media" speaking and so far he hasn't approved the comment.... :-) how very old media of him.