Adapt or don't. It's your funeral

There's a couple of great posts from .Rich Karlgaard at Forbes.com on the issue of the perceived "recession," and Rich Wallace at EE Times.



In the middle of Karlgaard's piece is this graf: "The other really deep reason is the underlying rate of economic change. That rate is accelerating. Companies that are leaders in their industries--and this applies to leaders in all industries--are falling out of leadership faster than before. New and disruptive companies are popping up everywhere, like jaguars amid elephants. Consider what Google and Craigslist have done to strip newspapers like the L.A. Times and their readers and classified-ad revenue base. Zillow, Home and others will take the display real estate ads next."



And in Wallace's, he quotes his uber boss from a conference in India: "Nowhere have ALL of these disruptive forces come to bear with more of a vengeance than in the world of electronic, Internet-driven media --a point driven home to the audience by David Levin, CEO, United Business Media, plc (UBM is the parent company of CMP Media, the publisher of EE Times).



The entire dynamics of media marketing strategies are rapidly evolving, driven by disruptive technologies like Web 2.0. Organized around a decentralized media distribution scheme, Web 2.0 experiences 'are putting the audience at the heart of marketing,' Levin observed.



"It is becoming very clear that it is the audience that has the final influence and control, Levin said during the session on Key Technology Trends and Models Impacting Markets" Business Leadership Update at the final day of Nasscom Leadership Summit at Mumbai."



That's at the heart of what's changing the media. The dinosaurs like the LA and NY Times are struggling to adapt the the fact that the audience is really in charge because of the Internet. Maintaining the old model of interruption-based advertising and moral superiority over your audience is not longer working.



Change is never fun, but it is inevitable. Adapt or die, folks