Shortly after I began this blog, I wrote: “I’ve taken at least three months away from the office…. Mostly, I am spending every day involved in gaining a better understanding of the digital aspect of communications…. My goal isn’t to become an expert on any particular part of new media – my goal is to obtain a robust systemic overview and then help Qorvis adopt the approach and retain the additional expertise we need to cover all aspects of the communications revolution…. Maybe I’ll get to some breakthrough idea that will make everything clear.  Is there a unifying theory for the new world of communications?”

I am coming to some broad conclusions.  I feel pretty confident I will be doing a lot more writing about this in the future.  Here are some brief bullet points that underscore my thinking now.

• “New Media” refers to new tools that change the mechanics of communications.  “New Communications” refers to a much more fundamental revolution in communications.

• People who are expert in “New Media” are expert mechanics, who will always be valued and needed.  But people who truly understand how to communicate – that is, how to craft a message that will resonate with a targeted audience – will be of much greater value.  If you were a developer planning a new office building, who would be the last person you would go to?  The architect or the cement pourer?  Just as a new building starts with a design concept, New Communications campaigns start with the message concept and development.  It is the most important thing.  Everything else is secondary.

• “New Media” has made “New Communications” possible the same way the safety elevator made the skyscraper possible.  But in the final analysis, the skyscraper itself and what goes on inside is what is important, not the elevator – regardless of how critical it was to erecting the building.

• Journalism is dying, and the consequences are dramatic.  Newspapers were more than a medium for delivering news – they established the standards, ethics and professionalism of journalism.  The reporters whose bylines appeared on stories assumed the reputation of their papers because the papers provided an imprimatur of sorts.  The reader could assume that the publisher/editors of the paper vetted the reporter’s credentials, demanded accuracy, and edited the final draft.  Where will that exist when newspapers, for all practical purposes, no longer exist?  We are watching the rapid emergence of Neo-Journalism.

• As traditional journalism dies and there is an explosion in distribution channels, those who want to get a message to an audience must rely less and less on journalists to get that message to that audience.  They can control the message themselves and get exactly what they want to exactly the target they want.  As that trend continues, it will accelerate.  Whereas there will be exceptions (that is, there will be great journalists who are part of great news operations), they will simply be the exceptions that prove the rule.  And the less those who want to get messages across need to use third party journalists, the less they will use them.  This will accelerate even more the rise of the controlled message and the decline of (for lack of any better phrase) the third party re-crafted message.  This will demand more high quality reporting, which will be more expensive and thereby cost its audience more, which will reduce the audience even more, force a spike in the fee, and thus the evolution will continue.

• That will change the nature of communications firms.  Although they will most likely continue to buy space and/or time (as ad agencies do), or pitch stories for reporters to cover (as PR firms do), or stage events, or build web pages, all that will be the mechanics of the business, not the core of the business.  The core of the business will become increasingly about providing content.

More to come.