The Ambidextrous Media Organization

[originally posted on Merrill on Multimedia blog]

One of the biggest questions that keeps cropping up at the ONA convention is certainly not new: how do we make journalism sustainable?

Tina Brown, in her keynote Friday, was double sided when evangelizing that our industry needs innovation, and journalists should not be afraid to start new ventures. But when asked specifically about her own project’s business model, her demurred answer seemed predicated on the fact that she’s part of a very large media conglomerate — and that’s how she says her venture is going to survive.

I’m sure Leslie will share her own thoughts on this, as she and I have been kicking this idea around for a bit, but we need to remember who is in the best position to be leading this innovation movement: our current media companies who are so under fire today.

In business strategy, Stanford’s James G. March has posited that all businesses fall on a continuum between explorative and exploitative strategies. Those who follow the explorative model find their competitive advantage in creating new products/ideas. Those who exploit try to squeeze every efficiency out of their current business practices to increase revenue. I would argue that most mainstream media companies are closer to the exploit end of the explore/exploit axis.

Clearly there is still money to be made out of the current model of journalism. So let’s not throw out that model and blow up everything. And let’s remove ourselves from the Chicken Little line of thinking. What media companies need to do is become what March called “ambidextrous” organizations: Gain value from both strategies.

Media companies are best positioned to be leaders in the next era. Brown also talked about the idea of “churnalism” in her speech, where the same few stories are endlessly repeated among all the new media “outlets” springing up. Where is that content originally from? Typically the large media organizations.

Why are we giving away our biggest item of value — our extremely high-quality content — to others to make money on? Media companies have no reason not to be the ones invested in and backing those new ventures. Let’s set up incubators, backed by big media, to find the next big thing. Let’s set up funds of seed money and act as the angel investors of these new ideas. Let’s not leave money on the table — Venture Capital firms aren’t the only ones who can play this game.