Tag Archives: Quotable

Jeff Jarvis on cash cows

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Having a cash cow distracts companies from the future. It makes them complacent: ‘Look at all the money (still) rolling in.’ It makes them think that if they just tweak this and that — if they can still get away with raising their rates even as their audience and value are shrinking — they will continue to keep milking cash from that old cow. It makes them overly cautious: ‘Nobody hurt Bessie!’

And politically, the guys in charge of the cow don’t want anybody inside the company competing with them: no new products, no new power centers, no one else to set strategy, no one else to use resources. They win because, of course, they’re the ones bringing in the cash. Nevermind that they’re the ones stopping the company from building for the future. They’ll tell you that’s not their job. They’re there to protect the cow.

From a Jeff Jarvis post on Big Media

Nikol Lohr on pregnancy

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“I don’t want kids. Sometimes I like kids okay, sometimes they’re funny or smart, but I don’t want one growing inside me like a tape worm. They grow in there and press down all your organs and give you incessant heartburn and make you have to pee all the time and make your ankles swell so the only shoes you can wear are flip-flops. And then when they’re finished leeching off you, they slide out like greasy little piglets all mucousy and pink.”

“Then afterwards, you have twenty years of no life of your own. If you do it right, anyway. And then a whole lifetime of worry. Like having a dog that outlives you and runs away all the time and chews up all your furniture and pees everywhere and hates you at least for a while no matter what. A dog that no matter how good you try to be is slightly embarrassed of you and will definitely lie and deceive you. A dog that won’t let you pet it and that talks back.”

Doonesbury on bloggers

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“Isn’t blogging basically for angry semi-employed losers who are too untalented or too lazy to get real jobs in journalism? I mean if the market REALLY valued what you have to say, wouldn’t someone pay you for it?”

— Doonesbury

The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova

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“A teenage American girl, living in 1972 Amsterdam, comes across an ancient book in the library of her widower father, a former historian and now a diplomat. The book, blank save for an illustration of a dragon and the word Drakulya, contains a cache of faded letters all addressed to “My dear and unfortunate reader.” Thus begins a search for the truth behind the myth of Dracula, a search that crosses continents as well as generations.”

— The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Jeff Jarvis on “citizen media”

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“…new world of weblogs and citizens’ media is all about possibilities — many of them unrealized, I grant — while the world of the big, old media is increasingly about worry: fretting over declining revenue, resources, audience, quality, trust. That is one good reason for big media to embrace the small, rather than trying to recapture the old: It’s optimistic, energetic, new, open, growing, and fun; it’s the medium in the better mood and that’s catching. In short: Bloggers make better barmates.”  — Full post here

Next week at Gnomedex, I will be surrounded by lots of bloggers and new media types. I’m looking forward to 3 days of optimism, energy, fun. The future is here and I’m loving it.

Robert Iger on Disney’s New Media strategy

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Robert Iger, the future CEO of Disney:

“(We will) not allow management of traditional businesses to get in the way of very, very important migration to new-media platforms.”

Hmmm. Disney probably has enough money to pull that off but I’m not sure how smaller companies (like ours) accomplish this. The landscape might look very different in a few years. [Hollywood Reporter by way of E-Media Tidbits]

Profitable Demise

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An intriguing open to a thoughtful article by Jay Rosen (PressThink). The piece (Laying the newspaper gently down to die. And keeping the spirit of journalism alive.) looks at challenges facing the newspaper business and how it is (or is not) meeting those challenges. But I believe there’s something here for all traditional media. My big take-away was a concept called “harvesting market position.” A last-resort business model for companies undermined by substitute technology.

“An industry that won’t move until it is certain of days as good as its golden past is effecively dead, from a strategic point of view. Besides, there is an alternative if you don’t have the faith or will or courage needed to accept reality and deal. The alternative is to drive the property to a profitable demise.

Drive the property to a profitable demise. You won’t see that in the company mission statement. But my favorite quote from Professor Rosen’s article came from Craig Newmark (craigslist):

“I realize I’m no news guy, not an activist; just like everyone else, tired of news that I can’t trust. My favorite irony is that Jon Stewart produces fake news that’s honest; and the White House produces allegedly honest news that’s really fake.”