sutton049

N ational and international media development and aid programs often embrace the objective of developing independent media as a means of promoting democratic development.  They do so in hopes of reducing political power over media, but fail to acknowledge that all media and communication infrastructures are systemically influenced by economic and social, as well as political power. And they often seem to ignore the reality that the history and cultures of nation states affect how that power is exercised. Media systems and their content, and the degree of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, are reflections of the alignment of the dominant cultural elements in society. Even in the West, most notably within European Union and Council of Europe governing institutions, efforts to promote media independence are gaining significant support—particularly when applied to m edia in Central and Eastern Europe. The term media independence is often used naively and imprecisely, cons...

Twitter is one of the best known social media services, but it is suffering from its inability to provide sufficient value to consumers, advertisers, and investors. The firm has 316 million users, a respectable figure—but 80% smaller than Facebook. Its share price has dropped below the level set when it became a publicly traded company in 2013. The company has lost about $30 billion in market value in the past two years and is now valued at $15 billion. It continues to experience negative operating and profit margins and negative return on assets, despite about $2 billion in revenue. Twitter is suffering from two fundamental business problems. First, the lack of an effective value proposition that makes it attractive to larger numbers of users. Second, lack of vision and direction. The latter led to the departure of its CEO in June 2015 and he has still not been replaced. A significant value problem for Twitter has been that it is primarily configured for short, one-way communicati...

Legacy news organizations (newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters) are confronting three critical relevance challenges as the digital world matures: Changing business configurations and characteristics, declining value of traditional news and informational content, and unhealthy attitudes toward audiences. These challenges will need significant attention if they are to be successful in the new information environment.   During the twentieth century news products were widely used, fast-moving consumer goods. Because media operated in relatively inefficient markets, news organizations were cash-producing investments with high cash flows that yielded high profits. Newspapers had asset-heavy balance sheets and excellent equity positions. The business drivers of the legacy news industry in the latter half of the twentieth century were g rowing consumption in absolute audience sizes (but declining penetration that most executives ignored). Companies changed high prices for advertis...

The markets of magazine and newspaper printing firms are undergoing significant changes, reflecting on-going transformations in the customers they serve. Some of the changes have been under way for 2 decades with traditional printing companies morphing into printing service companies offering more profitable value-added services and products.   These included high-end specialized printing capabilities and services, database printing, and wide-ranging distribution services. At the same time, the increasing number of magazine titles, accompanied by lower average press runs, pushed the companies toward higher efficiency and acquisition of presses and systems designed for lower press runs. In this environment, many printers could not effectively compete and consolidation began creating large regional players in the industry. Shorter-term trends have also played havoc with the printing industry by killing off some magazine and newspaper titles, lowering the average number of pages ...

What do you do when your industry is changing? What do you do when your innovations are fueling the changes? Those problems have plagued Eastman Kodak Co. for three decades and the company’s experience provides some lessons for those running legacy media businesses. Eastman Kodak’s success began when it introduced the first effective camera for non-professionals in the late 19 th century and in continual improvements to cameras and black and white and color films throughout the twentieth century. Its products became iconic global brands. The company’s maintained its position through enviable research and development activities, which in 1975 created the first digital camera. Since that time it has amassed more than 1,100 patents involving electronic sensing, digital imaging, electronic photo processing, and digital printing. These developments, however, continually created innovations damaging to its core film-based business. Digital photography created a strategic dilemma for the com...