Creative Destruction

A good conversation today with a group of journalism professors got me thinking about the future of the business and this catch phrase going around in the business world: "creative destruction."

Sometimes, it just doesn't make sense to keep printing newspapers. Or magazines.

That doesn't mean the need for well-formed, cogent messages is gone. It just takes on a new form or uses a new transmission method.

Cross pollinating that thought with last week's TWIT podcast, some of the great innovations happen in times of troubled economic times. Sure, the crazy financing or venture capital dries up, but creative people will continue to be creative. And the tools to publish are cheaper than ever.

The Tribune company might be bankrupt, and the NYT is taking out a second on its building. It does not mean the end of journalism. It means a new beginning is here.

In their time, Life, Look and the Saturday Evening Post were dominant. Once upon a time, CBS mattered. All they did was replace a penny press who came before them; and a pamphleteer before that.

Today, a journalist must be a writer, an editor and a publisher; a scribe, a recorder and a shooter. One person can repurpose the entire event: video tape and post the sound blast in its entirity, condense it to sound bites for a podcast and write commentary that refers back to the primary source -- the tape itself.

Hmm -- sounds a little like judge, jury and executioner. Well, that's where the journalism school comes in, now doesn't it, to provide the grounding as well as the advanced techniques.

More later.