Jeff Jarvis blogs Reuters chief Tom Glocer’s keynote at the Online Publishers Association. Rafat Ali from PaidContent.org was also there. Here is his take on the speech:
The nub of the issue: what is the role of the media firms in the second decade of this century? Our roles are:
— Seeder of clouds: we help them seed our content into their creations. People will join your community and join your tent.
— Provider of tools: We need to produce open standards and interoperability…we need to make our content at the crossroads of their consumption.
— Filter and editor: We need to have the skill to spot the gold…we need to help them get mass appeal.
Adopt these three roles or risk becoming less relevant to these audiences…that, ironically, also includes the traditional online publishers now.
Brands: Brands really matter: Too much choices means not choosing at all…brands serve a filtering function. Choice means letting professionals do us, and sometimes the wisdom of crowds help us do it.
If you lose the trust of your audience…you lose the audience. Protectionism doesn’t work, but neither does surrender. Understand it, encourage it and if we do the right things, we might just make it to Web 3.0.
Business model for Reuters: Financial services still have some time before the industry blows up, so we have leeway to innovate now.
We need to have a portfolio approach to innovation wthin media industry. Some will work, some won’t work, and we need that risk taking culture within our companies.
You can download the audio of his speech here here (45 mins., 10 MB).