The Key to Publishing's Survival

The Key to Publishing's Survival
Bob Sacks www.bosacks.com

The key to survival in the near and far future is for everyone in the publishing business to embrace everything digital. That doesn't mean you should stop printing magazines, but it does mean that if you aren't comfortable in the digital world you won't/can't survive. It is that simple.


All publishing leaders must jump in with both feet, learn the new languages, join Facebook, have at least 3 e-mail addresses, and get a Twitter page. If your kids speak the digital language and you don't, how can you possibly lead your flagship publication or publishing association into the new world? The answer clearly is that you cannot. If you are fearful of the Web's Second Life or worse, don't know what that is, then you can't have one.


To survive you must embrace digital technology like there's no tomorrow, because if you don't, there won't be. No one should be spared this digital education. Let me repeat that so we are on the same page: No one can be spared this digital education. That includes everyone from the mail room to the executive boards. I mean the leadership of MPA to the ABC. I am including the membership of the PBAA, GCA, PIA and the AARP. If you can't upload a video file and are not subscribed to several RSS feeds, you should be fired. If you can't convert a word docx file to a PDF, you are history. If you can't do the voodoo, you sure as hell shouldn't/can't manage those that do.


The rate of change in digital technologies is accelerating at an inhuman pace. If you don’t use it and aren't comfortable living in it, you can’t understand the importance of adapting your flagship for the times ahead, and you won’t be able to stay on the curve, let alone ahead of it.

I have recently come to believe that too much of our leadership is either incapable or too fearful to understand the true future of publishing. I think that we have limitless opportunities before us - the chance to reach more people and more advertisers instantly and more efficiently than ever before.

It is ok to love and respect our past and yet be prepared for the prosperous adventures ahead of us in the new world. There are 4 billion people connected to the web right now. That number will only grow. This should make any publisher salivate with here-to-fore undreamt of possibilities.

The question is who is going to lead you there. The old adage has never been truer: lead, follow or get out of the way. You have no other option

Snakes on the Plains

BoSacks Speaks Out: I just love a good headline and because of that I had to send this out. It is also an interesting question about " Truth In Journelism" in this article. I leave it up to your good judgement. Is this a headline story? Is this any kind of story at all?

"After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled: "She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!""
Ava Gardner (American film Actress of the 1940s and 50s who, despite her renowned beauty and sensuality, successfully resisted being typecast as a cex symbol. 1922-1990)


Snakes on the Plains?
BY Allan Mutter
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/


The morning got off to a nasty start for ophidiophobians in Oklahoma City when they opened Friday's newspaper to see a headline sprawled atop page one warning: "Big snakes could slither into state."

The problem with the alarming spread in The Oklahoman - replete with the headshot of a frightening-looking Burmese python - is that the danger of a snake invasion is really quite remote, as the newspaper's own story makes clear.

So, why did the Oklahoman play this non-story in the sensational fashion it did? I left a phone message for editor Ed Kelley and, so far, haven't heard back.

But I did have an interesting conversation with zoologist Gordon Rodda of the U.S. Geographic Survey, one of the scientists whose research formed the basis for the story. Here is what he said:

The USGS undertook a study of what climates in the United States theoretically could support the spread of a growing population of non-indigenous Burmese pythons that have taken up residence in the Florida Everglades. The areas warm and humid enough to support the non-poisonous constrictors could include Oklahoma, depending on how global warming shakes out over the next 100 years.
"But, if the implication in the newspaper story is that it is going to happen next Thursday, that's irresponsible," said Gordon. "It is a very dramatic way they portrayed it."

The particular irony of the Oklahoman's story is that it was so thoroughly reported by staffer Josh Rabe that no reasonable editor could have inadvertently misconstrued its significance.
In but one example, Josh quotes a local snake expert as saying it is "just absurd" to fear a Burmese python invasion in Oklahoma. "If you put one out in the front yard on a day like today," said snake breeder Bob Clark in a week when low temperatures were in the mid-20s, "you would have a snake-sickle by the end of the day."

To be sure, an onslaught of Burmese pythons would terrifying. The snakes can grow to lengths of 20 feet and become as fat as a telephone pole, says Gordon. Although the creatures are not poisonous, they instantly wrap themselves around their prey, squeezing the life out of the victim before gulping it down.

Although the snakes are capable of traveling as far 20 miles in a day, Gordon can't imagine them bellying all the way from Florida to Oklahoma City. "It is unlikely they would keep moving long enough in the same direction, given the randomness of their movements," he explains.
If the danger is negligible of telephone poll-sized Burmese pythons slithering 1,500 miles from the Everglades to Oklahoma City, then why would the newspaper have played the story in the way it did?

"With newspapers," says Gordon, "it's their business to make a big deal out of things."

Is it any wonder why four out of five people don't trust the media?