View From the Phlipside Radio - Amazon vs Libraries

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

It’s not often that I come across a media story that makes me uncomfortable.  Not creepy uncomfortable just I’m not sure I like this idea.  And that kind of uncomfortable is probably a very bad sign for this particular business model.

The media world in general is very imitative.  If you see someone else doing something and succeeding you immediately try and figure out how you can get in on the same thing.  One

reality TV show is a success and suddenly the whole world is filled with reality TV.  Streaming video is a success online?  Then everybody has to offer streaming video.  Needless to say not everyone does it well which means that some of those folks end up losing a lot of money on bad imitations.

For example we’ve talked about the success of Netflix in offering first DVD rental service then streaming media.  It’s not that they were first but rather that they were the first to really make it fly.  So people start imitating.  Amazon earlier this year decided to jump in.  So far the results are eh.  But Amazon didn’t become Amazon by being shy and retiring in business.  The other way of imitating a success is trying to find a slightly different approach.  And that’s where my discomfort begins.

Amazon is looking at taking the Netflix concept and use it in their prime product line, books.  Word is that you pay a monthly subscription fee just like Netflix and you get access to their massive inventory of books.  Now there’s still lots of details to work out, like hard copy, digital or both?  What kind of payment to the publishers will be needed?  There are others who are already trying this like the folks at booksfree and bookswim.  Neither of whom I’d heard of before this story surfaced.

So what makes me uncomfortable?  It’s that neither of those companies are who has the most to lose in all this.  That would be your local public library.  If Amazon makes a deal for e-books with the major publishers it creates a huge and insurmountable challenge to libraries moving into the digital age.  In times of tight budgets this is a game that the libraries just won’t be able to stay in.  Netflix helped put brick and mortar video stores on the endangered list.  I have an uncomfortable feeling about the outcome of this particular piece of imitation.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

View From the Phlipside - Biblion and magazines

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

So here’s the question that we’ve been tap dancing around on this program for a couple years.  What exactly will the next generation of news media look like?  Particularly those that follow in the footsteps of the magazine and newspaper.  While there’s been a lot of conversation and comment (like mine) on the subject there doesn’t seem to be a lot offerings on what it might look like.

Some, like the Daily for iPad, have gotten mixed reviews (I still love the one that called it “fluffy”.  Pretty sure that wasn’t what they were reaching for).  Most are simply translating the old print page to print on a screen.  Pretty dull I have to admit.  It seems like there ought to be more to it than that.  With all the additional options that our computers offer just text on a screen with pictures or the occasional video is that the best we can do?

Well maybe not.  Most fascinating is who just might have hit on the beginnings of that new formula.  The future of the newspaper or magazine just might look like - the New York Public Library.  Or at least like their new Biblion app for the iPad.  Biblion is intended to help bring people into the depth of the fabulous collection of materials that is the New York Public Library.  It is multi-media, text, graphics, photos, video and it is non-linear.  That means it’s not a matter of following the direction set by the author.  Rather you are given a central page that lays out the options and the information available to you.  You then get to pick and choose to explore the story in the manner and order you choose.  Not interested in reading the essay portion?  Skip directly to the video or the photos.  It is news that is given depth and dimension two things that too much of our news these days lack.

Biblion isn’t intended as a magazine.  That’s not what the NYPL was trying to create.  They created a fascinating way to explore the stacks in a digital form.  As someone who loves just wandering the collections of libraries exploring this sounds like a bigger and better way of doing just that.

What the Library has done is create something that is bigger and more profound than they anticipated.  They created the first really meaningful prototype for the next generation of news media.  The final product may or may not look just like Biblion.  But the news moguls would be very foolish not to take a long serious look at what just might be their future.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2011