Brady Media Group

Mother Nature can teach us a lot.

Paleontologists agree that one of the last dinosaurs was a small hairy guy with scales that flapped around in the trees of what is now Southern Germany. It actually started to sprout feathers just before the end of the Jurassic Era.  The little archaeopteryx probably looked a lot more like a hairy flying lizard than a bird.  Call it a last evolutionary gasp before snow and ice choked off most of the scaly giants and ushered in the age of milk and sweat glands over the next ten-thousand years.

So what’s the point?
Evolve or get pushed aside.
Reptiles still exist, they just don’t rule the planet.
And the adage applies to any entrenched species – or industry – that has to deal with a changing environment.

A hundred and fifty years ago, it was the Pony Express (and other buggy operations) that failed to adapt as steel rail crisscrossed the country.

Now it’s GM that has failed to adapt. We’ve known for years that Japan builds a great car and that our dependence on foreign crude was a problem. But Detroit refused to evolve.

And newspapers.  They’re messy and cumbersome and wasteful.  Too much expensive ink and oil involved in the process. But still, the newspaper exists much as it has for 100 years. Thin paper stamped, folded and delivered to your home. And now it is facing extinction.

And next, I might argue, could be a few more “old media” industries.   On the verge of being pushed aside.  My media metaphor is a little heavy, I’ll admit. But we TV news guys are known to err on the side of drama. Bullets “rip”, fires “roar” and hurricanes “batter the coast” on a regular basis.

And what better example of an aging industry trying to apply a little lipstick and remain relevant than TV newsrooms sprouting  a few social media components instead of digging deep and really evolving?  We all have websites with doodads and whistles, but the on-line cash flow’s a trickle, and TV news is expensive.  So we dabble in the digital dialogue – but remain focused on the flagship evening newscasts at 5, 6 and 10. Tune in tonight for all the stuff we want you to know – but can’t tell you yet.  Huh? We still want people to orient their lives around the box? Well yes, for now at least.  And for most TV managers, I imagine blogs and Tweets seem to be more marketing than journalism.

But are we in broadcast media evolving enough to remain relevant? Now I’m not one to argue that Youtube will replace Charlie Gibson and World News. But the tectonic plates are definitely shifting. We communicate differently as a species. And this old TV news guy is evolving.

I’ve seen the tide turning, and the future of media is a high-definition, real-time dialogue in which both sides contribute relevant content. We the public are not content to be spoon-fed the text and tape from New York at a specific time of day. The world simply does not work that way anymore.  Now we – the public – can create content ourselves. The blog and the video-sharing phenomena are here to stay.

That’s why I’ve created Brady Media Group. I think more and more of us have something clever and worthwhile to say.  And I want to help get those important messages out. Whether by creating the digital content and launching it into cyberspace or by attracting the attention of the professional journalists who still want to tell a great story – regardless of the platform or time of day it airs.

Either way, this dinosaur’s learned a new language. I’ve evolved. And I plan to be an ambassador from old media to new media. And I’m ready to help everyone else adapt and grow wings, too.  Get ready to fly in a new era of digital media. Or risk becoming  obsolete.

Time to step up, get creative and get the word out.