Ep. 9 — How Technology and the Digital Media Revolution are Transforming the Global Media Landscape / Marcus Brauchli, Journalist, Co-founder, North Base Media.
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https://media.blubrry.com/techtopiawithchitraragavan/ins.blubrry.com/techtopiawithchitraragavan/Techtopia_9_RD1.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Email | RSS Technology is shaking up the news media — as content creators of every ilk and genre have taken advantage of the digital revolution, commoditizing content and forever blurring the lines between e-commerce and content, news and entertainment, information and disinformation. One media executive who saw the digital revolution coming long before others did, is journalist, media investor and advisor, Marcus Brauchli. He is co-founder of North Base Media, an investment firm specializing in media and technology in global growth markets. Before co-founding North Base Media, Brauchli was executive editor of The Washington Post, shepherding the newspaper’s digital revolution, and helping the Post win seven Pulitzer prizes. Before joining the Post, Brauchli was managing editor of the Wall Street Journal. Brauchli believes that the gravest threat to journalism, society and democracy, is the rise of misinformation and disinformation, which he describes as the “accidental by-product” of the technology revolution. Brauchli believes the “moral advocation” on the part of big companies in Silicon Valley to fight online disinformation is partly fueled by their “misguided, naive and ill thought out philosophies of libertarianism that don’t actually reflect what’s good for the society.” But Brauchli says there are growing pressures from all fronts now to start holding these companies accountable and that this likely will happen country by country. Brauchli adds that in the U.S, there are tools to regulate Facebook and Google as economic monopolies. However, the First Amendment precludes the path to disciplining these companies as “information monopolies,” raising questions about how our society can pressure these companies to do the right thing. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Technology has transformed the global media landscape, especially, the news media, as content creators of every ilk and genre have taken advantage of the digital revolution, commoditizing content, and forever blurring the lines between e-commerce and content, news and entertainment, information and disinformation. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone. I’m Chitra Ragavan, and this is Techtopia. One media executive who saw the digital revolution coming long before others did, is journalist, media investor, and advisor Marcus Brauchli. He’s here to talk with us today about the future of digital media and news. Brauchli is co-founder of North Base Media, an investment firm specializing in media and technology in global growth markets. He has served as an advisor to media groups, including Graham Holdings, Univision, and HT Media. Chitra Ragavan: Before co-founding North Base Media, Brauchli was executive editor of the Washington Post, overseeing the Post’s print and digital news operations, shepherding the newspapers digital revolution, and helping the Post win seven Pulitzer prizes. Before joining the Post, Brauchli was managing editor of the Wall Street Journal. His more than two decade tenure at the journal included 15 years as a foreign correspondent, mainly in Asia, and eight years as a senior editor in New York. Marcus, welcome to Techtopia. Marcus Brauchli: Thank you so much, Chitra. Great to be here. Chitra Ragavan: We were both reporters at major news outlets when the digital revolution began and the end of what you aptly described the other day, when we were chatting, as the end of the Voice of God period, when journalists were highly trained, experienced, reputable, for the most part, respected quite a bit, and the main content creators in media and news media. And then you saw the digital tsunami hit and it changed all of our lives. And you were on the forefront of bringing the Washington Post into the digital age. It must’ve been a huge challenge to pull it off. What was it like? Marcus Brauchli: Well, the truth is, the transformation that began with digital technologies, which really led to what you were describing, the end of the Voice of God, the end of the gatekeeper era. It actually began, probably, 10 or 15 years before I came to the Washington Post in 2008. The internet began to erode at the edges. The ability of the big centralized sort of monopoly, oligopoly media players, the ability of them to set the agenda for all other news coverage, because it opened up the door to other people creating content and distributing content via social media channels via start-up media companies, in the early days, via blogs. Allowing people to sort of connect with audiences in a way that previously hadn’t been possible. And it took a long time for the big established media companies to recognize this tsunami of change that was bearing down on them. Marcus Brauchli: For a long time, it simmered and percolated along. And the big focus was on whether the digital revolution was going to erode, as it did, the classified ad business was going to take away, as it did, the display advertising business. And it wasn’t so much on how content itself would have the ability of anybody to create content and share content and create groups to share content, how that would erode the credibility and the authority of traditional media houses. Marcus Brauchli: And that really, it came slowly. The Washington Post, where I was the executive editor from 2008 until the end of 2012, the Washington Post, actually, was very early into digital media. They were one of the first organizations to put their newspaper online. The Washington Post Company, at that time, owned both the Washington Post and Newsweek, and the then owner of the Washington Post Don Graham, who was the chairman of the Washington Post Company, made a very astute decision early on to put all the digital media operations, of not only the Washington Post, but Newsweek into a separate building in, frankly, a separate state. Marcus Brauchli: It was actually in Virginia, a different legal jurisdiction from the Washington Post or Newsweek. Because he was concerned, at the beginning, that all of these digital media companies would be suffocated by the rhythms and obsessions of print journalists, who weren’t