What Do Wired, Obama, N.Y. Times, YouTube, and Sam Zell Have in Common?

Many media executives, struggling to adapt, continue to focus too much on the tools of new media as opposed to opportunities those tools create.   I’m continuously hearing about how this company or that is going to go “multimedia.” Too often, what this means to the exec in question is telling the same stories as always, but now releasing them as video or audio files as well.

I remember some of the truisms colleagues at Wired, like Louis Rossetto and Kevin Kelly,  used to repeat like mantras. “It’s not the computer, it’s the network!” or “You don’t buy a FAX machine, you buy a network.” They would never let any of us forget that gadgets are only gadgets — and that what’s cool today will be passe by  tomorrow. What is lasting are the interactive networked communities that these tools help people create.

In this regard, the media industry could learn a thing or too from the Obama campaign, which made effective use of email, text messaging, social networking, micro-blogging and other interactive technologies to weave together the most successful (and lucrative) community organizing effort of all time.

In particular, programming news for mobile platforms is an urgent priority for media companies. Breaking news headlines are a perfect content type for mobile, as are sports scores, market quotes, etc. Dozens of software start-ups are vying for the gorilla position in each of these niches, but once again, this is simply a battle of the gadget-makers.

Media execs need to explore how they can build and serve their communities via mobile. One obvious aspect is the two-way information flow, whereby users can generate tips and leads to reporters as they are out and about. After all, it doesn’t take an ambulance-chaser to locate the fire.

Meanwhile, to return to where I started, trust me, it isn’t the video, it’s the content.  The New York Times sounds downright utopian at times, predicting that Internet will reverse the TV effect of “dumbing down” audiences  because people will be search and find topics that truly interest them and control how much time they spend viewing video clips. All true.

But I’ve yet to see many news videos created by mainstream media sites that float my particular boat. I spend a lot more time at YouTube. (And I’m talking about locating serious news stories.) Virtually anything of note that happens ends up at YouTube. Those videos are easy to embed and contextualize.

To me, that’s a better business model that reinventing the wheel.  Stop retraining your reporters to shoot video, and put them to work digging out facts. If Sam Zell has yelled expletives at his employees, for example, odds are an undercover clip of the event is already up on YouTube.

At a moment like that, it’s better to aggregate than create!