The ftm 2012 Greatest Hits

#1 - In The Digital Order, Is Freedom Of The Press Obsolete?
Freedom of the press has endured, as a legal concept, for nearly five hundred years when kings were stopped from seizing printing presses. Much has changed since then. The press is sophisticated and a big business, though both diminishing under the digital roar. Perhaps the legal language needs attention.

#2 - Google Fail? Think Again!
Tipping past the growth phase of the business cycle to the mature phase brings on new challenges for an organization, media, technology or otherwise. As it happens when a company matures the profit growth rate levels out, the cost of doing business rises. Smart organizations don’t panic, embrace the change, keep focused and avoid all the jumping up and down.

#3 - Online Media Goes Big And Bold… But Not Brilliant
Being number one means never having to explain the small things. Reaching into page view, audience and circulation figures for that competitive edge is risky. Like everybody else in this 140 character new media world, media people want just the headline. Details are so messy.

#4 - A Tale Of Tabloid Troubles
Every tabloid editor knows what moves eyeballs. It’s a skill passed on generation after generation, unbound by geography. Dirt on celebrities and politicians is fine but nothing beats that grainy photo of a well-known somebody starkers. Brilliance is causing talk on the street, any street, and maybe a lawsuit. Leveraging a better business deal is genius.

#5 - They Were Wrong About ACTA
Street protests in several cities over recent days generated more than headlines anti-piracy advocates never expected. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a multi-lateral treaty to protect “copyright protected works” through a new global enforcement mechanism, is just short of ratification. Activists mounted a campaign to derail, at most, or disrupt, at least and it may have succeeded.

#6 - Socialized News Media Is Here
The online currency of the realm is traffic, the gross count of visitors. Ad-servers pay on some dividend of traffic. Web-masters constantly sort through traffic figures looking for keys to the coffers. But, as that physics lesson taught, there’s change in all that looking.

#7 - Good Night And Good Luck
As new media shortens the attention span of viewers and readers to 140 characters, reporters and editors are even quicker to move from one event, crisis or revelation to the next. Context is lost, some say post-modernly irrelevant. Those intent on controlling images are ever more pleased.

#8 - Look Carefully! It’s A New Digital Landscape
Where public broadcasters are ubiquitous and well-funded, private channels have a tough fight. But fight they will for audience and advertising. Some are turning in some quite good numbers by emphasizing local content, good marketing sense and a boost from digital platforms.

#9 - Digital Radio: What Would Steve Jobs Do?
Digital radio development is, as it has been, up and down. Launches precede re-launches. Promotion has the appearance of trial and error. Supporters see one set of problems, detractors yet another. It’s a tough nut to crack.

#10 - More Money, Less Madness: The Ad People Are Flying
A giant outdoor ad campaign for the coming new season of the hot and trendy Mad Men TV drama shows, simply, an image of the lead character falling through the air. It’s controversial in New York City, evoking gristly images, though the producers call it a metaphor for “a man whose life is in turmoil.” Mad Men portrays the highly charged, brutally competitive and enormously creative world of Madison Avenue of the early 1960’s. The advertising world is still the same…but not.

See also...

ftm Greatest Hits 2011

ftm Greatest Hits 2010

ftm Greatest Hits 2009