Corey, media disruption and newsagents
The Corey Worthington story which has dominated headlines here and overseas this past week demonstrates how the media has changed and how old media cannot keep up with a fast moving story.
While TV crews and radio stations fought to get Corey into their studios to have a crack at the sixteen year old and newspapers had yesterday’s news, Corey and his friends were using new media to spin his new celebrity their way and online sites made the story their own and more immediate. They were on youtube and elsewhere with their take on the story as they saw it for their generation.
Online media outlets such as Monkey Magazine in the
Slapcorey got to over 300,000 hits in a matter of hours as a viral bushfire was set off.
Blogs such as ilovecoreyworthington took the story and the opinion around it even further.
Crikey provided analysis of the media coverage of the Corey story and more up to date coverage than newspapers.
BustedTees and others got into the commercial opportunity with t-shirts and sunglasses.
News Ltd understood the importance of online and paid for a Google Ad to display if you searched for Corey using the search engine. Defamer joined them with a Google ad yesterday but their link resulted in an error.
While Australian newsagents could do no more than sell newspapers and magazines through this tsunami about Corey, it’s instructive to take a moment and look at how this story ran through the week and consider the role we, as newsagents, played compared to how it may have played out ten years ago.
I am not suggesting could have done anything differently than selling the products we have. However, we have to question our relevance in the context of these fast moving stories, the relevance of the products we sell.
Relevance is a big question for newsagents and goes to the heart of the question of what the newsagency of the future looks like.
The Corey story will be studied in universities this year as a media case study I’m sure. It is a story which demonstrates how people in the news can use Web 2.0 tools to have greater control over their message, how others online are adept at providing more current news and analysis of fast-moving stories and how out of date old media has become.
Newsagents ought to study the Corey story as carefully as media students at university. It shows his how people are consuming and interacting with news.
I don’t see the Corey Worthington story as as damaging newsagency relevance as much as being a reminder that the world has changed. We need to understand this and make capital investments in our our businesses accordingly. While some newsagents are, and finding success, many are not – they are waiting for publishers and other suppliers to unveil a new future for them.
On Corey himself, good luck to him. He is sixteen. I had a party at my place when I was sixteen and my parents were away for the weekend. While it didn’t attract as many as Corey’s party or any media coverage, I can understand his need. Yeah, good luck to him!
