The new distribution (It’s a different world)

Below is a 6-minute video essay by Paul Bradshaw, a UK new-media expert and senior lecturer in online journalism at Birmingham University. This is worth your time. He’s talking about the profound change in distribution models for media that’s taken place; it’s an excellent presentation about what many media practitioners don’t yet fully understand.

Bradshaw is talking in generalities in terms of news and journalism, about how the new distribution online is largely in the hands of the audience, not just online publishers (the old distribution professionals). While he doesn’t mention classifieds, I will suggest that you listen to Bradshaw with classifieds in mind. Substitute classifieds content for the news content he’s talking about.

I think this is one of the most important concepts to understand about reinventing the newspaper classifieds model. Resurrecting classifieds revenues will depend heavily on leveraging the power of online users and external website publishers to widely distribute classifieds content. That’s the ticket to newspaper classifieds rising again. (This is a topic I’ll be writing about a lot on this website.)

Tags: distribution, paul bradshaw, videos