A few accumulated thoughts on media

[Commentary] What I have learned about media after spending nearly 12 years on GigaOm, pretty much most of my working life in various aspects of media, and two decades on the Internet?

• Media is not publishing alone. My definition of media? “Anything which owns attention.” This could be a game, or perhaps a platform. Ironically, the media tends to associate media with publishing -- digital or otherwise -- which in turn is too narrow a way to consider not only the media but also the reality of the competitive landscape and media-focused innovation.
• Media continues to be under the influence of deflationary forces of the Internet.
• Traffic, writers & analytics. Some media companies that rely on advertising revenue are tying journalist compensation to the traffic their story generates. It doesn’t work because it de-prioritizes writing. Writing works when publications are writing and serving the best interest of their users; numbers are good yardstick but not a way to compensate a person.
• Fake traffic and bots rule. Many people in the business agree that a lot of the traffic on the web is bot traffic, so all this traffic people talk about is faux traffic. Is a page being auto-refreshed on an open tab in your browser really useful “attention?” I don’t think so. There are many more examples of this worthless traffic.
• What could be the next successful model? In searching for the next sustainable business model or media company, the company needs to be great at “owning attention” and the company must be very clear about what it stands for.