Culture, Politics & Buzz

With:
— Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette.com)
— John Gerzema (Young and Rubicam)
— Dominik van Jan (NextNextBig Thing)
— Moderator Farai Chideya (PopandPolitics.com)

Oops … no Ana Marie; she must be wonketting elsewhere today.

John: Self-manifestation by simply typing … creating and presenting your own world. … RSS allows people to create their own applications their own world.

How do your reach young people?

Dominik: Needs shift rapidly (among this demographic). They have friends out there who are attuned to changing pods.

John: They learn through interaction with people in their own networks.

Farai: How do reach young people who are silo-ed out with a news product?

Dominik: One way is to get Puff Daddy.

Dominik: Blogs are authenitic; it doesn’t get much more authentic than that. … Kids today don’t have just one life; they live in 99 worlds. … Kids grow up with technology; it’s natural; they don’t have to think about it.

Dominik: If you had voting by text messaging, you would have a lot of young people voting.

John: Transitional values don’t change (recklessness, revolt against authority), but underneath that are core values.

John: Quality will always be quality, and people will go to quality (check out www.musicplasma.com). …News has been biased for a long time and will continue to be biased as we continue to go to what we are interested in.

What is the revenue model?

John: All the models right now are up in the air … 30 years of old ideas; it’s up for grabs. This is a time of great uncertainty (as the metrics shake out). The models are all changing.

The Wild West nature of the contribution thing — Is that good, will it continue?

Dominik: People will blend out what doesn’t make sense; people will begin to seek out brands.

John on "podding out": Media fragmentation is obvious; it isn’t going to come back to a mass audience. With fragmentation, the media models are changing. Podcasting has only been around for a year! … It’s still about communities. All these trends, you’ve got to stay within 17 to 27; that’s what you’ve got to watch.

Dominik: This age group doesn’t focus on just one thing (there’s the 99 things).