AR&D Reinventing Local Media

"Optimists are nostalgic about the future," or so the quote goes, widely attributed to the Chicago Tribune. It's a good quote for the times we're in - heck, even the week we're in. The publisher of the LA Times and the editor of the Chicago Tribune both quit, no doubt due to the Sam Zell takeover. Ad bucks are down and there's no dispute they're going lower. It costs a fortune to travel anywhere this summer.

And soon, you won't even be able to buy an American-owned Bud.

Plenty to be pessimistic about.

But I'm nostalgic about the future. I can remember, vividly, saying to a friend in 1984 "This is 'the future.' We have cool cars, we have computers, we have ATMs that give us money whenever we want, we can call across the seas, we've been to the moon, we can fly - all the things than man has dreamed of." I swear. Ask Jen Harris. OK, she may not remember it. But I had the epiphany. It was in a Toyota Camry. And I can admit this because I was wrong. 1984 wasn't 'the future'. It was almost 25 years ago.

I am nostalgic about the great things yet to come, because I can see walls coming down. I started to preach convergence media in 2000. Nearly all the practices you see in newsrooms now weren't allowed under the rule "TV first, Web second." The decade isn't even out, and the mindshift has at least changed, even if the practices haven't everwhere. I am nostalgic for the time when that will come. And it will.

 I am nostalgic for the future because I don't think journalism is going downhill. I think the way we investigate news and disseminate information will get better. What is holding us back is one attempt after another to hold on to ways that haven't changed since the 19th (even 18th) century. But if we take the efforts that go into making the same homogenized local TV newscasts and we put those into creating great acts of local journalism... we're back in the news business. Otherwise, we're just trying to hang on to a model from the 1960s.

I am nostalgic for the future because, since the inception of Facebook, I have reconnected with a number of old friends. Is there a better kind of friend? Place-based technologies like those for the iPhone will make this kind of rekindling even easier - "Your friend from high school is three blocks away - want to meet at the Starbucks on 56th and 5th? Here's a coupon for a free latte!"

We get hit with all kinds of setbacks in life, and this has been one downer of a year economically. Just look at any media company's stock. We can decide that this is it; to paraphrase T.S. Eliot: This is the way the media world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. Or we can be nostalgic for the future because we know the reinvention is here and with a change in our course there are great, unknown and wonderful things ahead.