The seismic shocks of social media

It's been a long time since I've thought about tectonic plates.  You know, those huge chunks of the Earth's crust that used to be all jammed together, and for the past jillion years have been drifting, sometimes colliding and sometimes leaving vast oceans. 

It's happening again -- in another way.  This time, the "tectonic plates" are our traditional big city newspapers, like the L.A. Times, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune (to name a few).  Even a casual observer of media conglomerates (including traditional TV station ownership) would know that something seismic is going on.  Earlier this year, Knight Ridder sold itself.  In the last few weeks, the Tribune company has put itself on the block.  And last week, Jack Welch and his friends made noise that they want to buy the Boston Globe (I guess now now that its value has sunk to to a fraction of its last sale price (to the New York Times)). 

These shifts mean huge changes for the way professional service firms manage their brands, reputations, images, messages -- indeed, anything related to marketing communications, client service, and even the firm's growth strategy.  I think Ben McConnell captured it well: 

Nearly all of the company's [The Tribune Company] traditional media properties are suffering the effects of audience fragmentation caused by MySpace, YouTube, and a million video games. The era of traditional media conglomerate ownership is over.

In his post, McConnell goes on to reference the shaky business fortunes of numerous other media companies. 

Many professional service firms have staked their entire media relations programs and marketing ROI measurement initiatives on the incorrect assumption that they can gain traction over rivals through these traditional one-way media.  If you're the head of your firm's marketing strategy, and you DON'T have plans to take advantage of the shift to social media, you (and your professional firm) are in for some seismic shocks.   

Please please please do a better job than your media targets at adapting to "the disruptive arrival of digital media."