I found a few things interesting about Jim Brady’s discussion, but perhaps the most interesting was the fact that he says it is necessary to curate the news for the CONSUMER’s interests in an effort to keep local readers interested and secondly the thought of events being a pivotal piece of keeping and recruiting readership for a digital media. One of the flaws in the media industry is the fact that so much of the ownership is not only concentrated but also that the media owners have so much power over what news is printed. One of the issues is that the owners of media and advertisers are also owners of other businesses. This means that journalists and editors have to keep this fact in the back of their mind when reporting news stories. For example Disney who owns ABC, ESPN, and other media platforms also own the Anaheim Ducks Hockey team and have a steak in the oil industry. This would in turn affect the way ABC and ESPN report on these topics. A news platform free of media owners and focus on the consumer. He emphasizes the need for a strong relationship with the consumer in order to actually build a deep connection and focus on what the consumer wants and needs rather than about page views. This means eliminating click bait and creating slide shows for the sake of numbers, “focus on time well spent” rather than keeping people on the website. The target audience wants to experience things and attend events, so he is giving them events! It seems that Brady’s innovative approach is almost the most obvious way to run a business, answer to the needs of the consumer and the success will follow.
