Media Bling?

Not just conspicuous consumption, digital media has graduated into the media industry’s gold standard.

When digital media first emerged on the balance sheet of media conglomerates, nobody really knew how the freewheeling world of online media would translate into actual profitability. Those days are long gone.

As I sat in today’s panel entitled: “Digital Media and Ad Sales-Blogs to Broadband: New Media is Changing” at the NAMIC Annual Conference (www.namic.com), one thing came across loud and clear: new media was bringing in serious value in the form of ad dollars at a faster rate than its more traditional cousin. Also, we know that web producers/editors should work en tandem with their more traditional counterparts. And, finally, we have learned that media conglomerates offering free, online – yet high quality – content results in higher traditional media sales for magazines and newspapers. In short, the uncertainty of the digital media beast is quickly being tamed.

And who exactly are these lion tamers of the digital media realm?

In addition to being a traditional journalist, they may also be a serial blogger. In addition to being the VP of Ad Operations, they are also computer programmers. …And what is emerging is not only the highly discussed “media convergence” of content, but the convergence of employee functional roles in the workplace. And does one keep pace in this new competitive environment? The panelists also had the answer to that as well: embody these cross-functional skill sets and always continue learning about the new, new media.

-Volunteer 365