New Media’s Authenticity Problem
Prior to OpenAI acquiring TBPN for approximately $100 million, there had been something about the podcasts, newsletters, and livecasts comprising new media that wasn’t sitting right with me. It increasingly felt like some of the prevailing assumptions underpinning new media’s growth over the past decade had been a mirage. There is now a side to new media that once seen, can’t be unseen, and it’s not pretty.
A decade ago, the new media space was the Wild West. I launched Inside Orchard’s sibling site, Above Avalon, in November 2014 at a time when “newsletter” was more likely to be associated with investment bulletins sent via postal mail. My business plan was focused on going direct to readers while playing in fertile ground between Wall Street firms publishing research for institutional clients and the Wall Street Journals and the New York Times of the world being too big to cover Apple’s inner workings. While there were plenty of “independent” websites and media publications at the time, the true one-person-does-it-all publication was in its infancy.
During this era, pros and cons found with new media were as follows:
Directness with readers / audience. Instead of writing for a large publication or website and having little to no visibility regarding who was consuming your work, freedom and power were found with building your own audience.
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