Having said that, advertising in the mainstream media isn’t entirely broke. Dwindling, maybe. But let’s be honest, we still (at least I do) pick up useful information about concerts, movies, sales, store openiings etc in newspapers. I never zap past a Geico or Aflac ad on TV (though I will a Godaddy un-commercial.)

But here’s another interesting take by Cory Treffiletti in Online Spin.

He was writing about responding to an audience question (at New Communications Forum) about what to do when a client does not want to venture into new media –because the old media still works. His response: write a case study about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, which survived for a loooong time… More seriously:

When your company is prospering, and things are looking great, is the BEST time to test out new ideas, because you have the wiggle room and you’ve been awarded the respect and trust to take risks. When you’re driving successful results, you should always be testing something new for further down the road because, inevitably, things are going to change.

I like that. Things are going to change. Big Music, for a long time didn’t want to ackknowlege that P2P was going to be the way people find music, lawsuits or not. They were in a hissy fit when Apple used the line "rip, mic, burn" but look how this Roman Empire, while still suing, has quietly adopted some of the Apple philosophy –if not follow in iTunes footsteps.

Big Journalism is rife with examples. San Francisco Chronicle , NYT etc are podcasting because they don’t want to be the last ones left to turn the lights off in the colleseum. Shel Israel has a good explanation here of how newspapers are also blending journalism and blogging. Things are changing, whether we embrace it or not. And let’s not forget, even bloggers need to recognize that this model too, will change, or be overtaken by something different or more improved.