Being Your Own Media

Yes, the provocative title of the panel I've been asked to speak at CoSIDA this year.

Previous post touched on part of the result of the decision to be more pro-active with our media production. Every time this gets brought up, I hear from legacy media members about how the goal is to replace them.

No, not at all. They continue to serve their valuable societal role -- watchdog, commentator, etc.

What many of them also want to do -- harvest the low-hanging fruit of easy streaming - is where some of the tension happens. All it takes is the tech to set up a camera and stream out a press conference.

Individual protestations of legacy media members notwithstanding, I don't see our role at RazorVision as trying to "control" our message by serving as the streaming provider. Quite the opposite. Not unlike the White House or C-SPAN, we're making sure the entirety of events are presented to everyone; and that all sports get represented.

So yes, we do want to be the one that brings you events -- and of those 148 events we produced last year, probably 100 of them had no media coverage other than what we provided.

Now, I'm not going to pretend to be naive and say we don't have a point of view in a lot of our other work -- a media release, a feature package -- but on the streaming events, it is pretty hard to "manage" something going out pretty raw and complete to fans and interested parties.

And since almost all of the media events are free, I'm also not understanding complaints that we are trying to profit off a post-game basketball press conference.

I'm interested in feedback here -- from fellow CoSIDA types and media. As with all other previous national convention presentations, I'll roll out many of the details and points here over the next couple of weeks.