A Nonhysterical View of Where News Is Heading   

Mega Media: How Market Forces Are Transforming News

By Nancy Maynard
Maynard Partners Inc.
180 pages; $16.95

If you feel besotted by the hoopla over what is happening to the news business these days, over how the frenetic marketplace and rampaging technology seem to be placing everything up for grabs, then here is a welcome piece of clarity and insight.

Everyone from Luddites to early adopters can benefit from Nancy Maynard's nonhysterical, nondefensive, nonjargony--and delightfully nonlengthy--analysis.

"The news business today," she aptly writes, "is like the Wild West, in digital drag." But Maynard, a veteran journalist, businessperson and educator, takes a straightforward approach to demystifying this superheated environment. She identifies seven "forces driving the future of news" and offers clearheaded analysis, sensible predictions and some measured but wise advice.

Her work is characterized by balance and open-mindedness. She clearly has a point of view--the love of journalism, particularly the kind that serves the public interest with robustness and diversity. But she is no old-timer flailing away at all things modern. She understands the business imperative (she and her late husband, Robert Maynard, owned the Oakland Tribune), she appreciates technological advance, and she seems comfortable with change.

And change is what "Mega Media" is all about. There are seven key forces, Maynard writes, "whose courses will have the greatest impact" on 21st century news. They are the digitization of information, changing distribution systems, the development of market brands in the media, the influence of the generation gap, the importance of localism, the potential impact of federal policy, and the evolving media revenue stream.

Digitization, as Maynard points out, "preserves news like refrigeration preserves food." It offers powerful new reporting tools, reduces the cost of newsgathering and production and in general makes news, like frozen food, easier to find, keep and use.

For Maynard, however, the issue of the moment is not information itself, but how it is distributed. News is a perennial, a fundamental need of social creatures. That fact hasn't changed and probably won't. "For information providers the Internet battleground is not over content but conduit: Who controls customer access?"

So the distribution system becomes vital, and of course the print media find themselves at a disadvantage with their clumsy, slow and expensive distribution methods. Their response, Maynard predicts, will be to ally with other information services, especially those that control the so-called "portal" Internet sites, the ones that show first on computer users' screens, guiding and channeling the consumers' online pathway. "The first screen is nothing less than the consumer's gateway to the information universe," Maynard writes.

Once news providers have customers' attention, brand-name distinctions become especially important. According to Maynard, successful media must fill a need; create a distinctive personality by drawing on special talent, expertise, convenience or depth; maintain quality, profitability and diversity; and hold onto a reputation for integrity. They will also trade on the huge advantage of localism, both on- and off-line.

But to accomplish all this, Maynard says bluntly, the media must stop thinking like old coots. Too much of today's media are controlled by what she calls "the gray-haired set," aging baby boomers who can be ignorant or, worse, contemptuous of the changing media habits of younger people.

"The basic differences between each generation's learning styles may well be the major problem impeding new product design in traditional media," Maynard writes.

Hovering questions involve how federal policies will evolve (on issues like ownership rules, broadcast spectrum distribution and Internet regulation) and where media revenue will come from. Will advertisers abandon mass markets for greater efficiency in niche-selling? How will digitization affect classified ads? Will Internet advertising and e-commerce truly take off? And how will "the Internet's closer nexus between information and commerce" affect journalism ethics and practice?

Maynard cannot answer all these questions, but she does provide some astute observations.

"As in the past, success will grow from a mixture of superior market position, superb marketing practices and inventive content, including great journalism--all married to the right technology and distribution systems. As always, boldness can be bankable. And leadership, creativity and integrity are bankable."

In short, Maynard believes in leadership. A medium's leadership will be decisive in its success, and journalists and their managers must be educated to lead--to make good, quick decisions under pressure, to stay independent, to serve audience needs with integrity.

This is certainly a romantic view, but "Mega Media" makes an impressive case that it is a hardheadedly practical one as well.