In the story of trade magazine Variety's release of Film Critic Todd McCarthy and Theater Critic David Rooney, the real issue is that the mag is being picked apart by online media's fragmentation process. And within that is a terrible misunderstanding of how media works in the 21st Century.
As blogs like TMZ.com and Variety's real competitor Nikke Finke's Deadline.com become more popular and abundant in number, Variety loses, or has lost, its exclusivity. That has not been replaced by a good technical understanding of how to get its news seen online over its competitors.
Variety is dying as its downsizing. Variety's laid off eight staff members including McCarthy and Rooney, and is stuck within an old media model. It's using the new standard for any old media company that wants to make sure it's seen as "getting" new media: a Facebook and YouTube accounts, and a @Variety Twitter account. But it lacks the full, interconnected and monetized social network platform and its obvious the newspaper's managers don't spend time growing their online system.
Variety's YouTube channel does not help its website. And some of the videos have been blocked by studios like Fox because the videos featured Fox content. Moreover, the Variety YouTube channel lacks ads of its own, and its obvious that Variety has done nothing to take advantage of the revenue-generating possibilities of becoming a YouTube Partner. And that's just for starters.
If Variety understood the idea of making sure its brand was on every platform imaginable, it would have avoided sacking its key employees. But what's happening is Variety, to be frank, obviously does not know what it's doing in the New Media space. A pay space, or velvet rope, will not work because Variety's content is not unique enough to demand such a pay system. It will not work.
Stay tuned.
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