Om Malik is making the big step of staking his life online. And the master of the scoop is quite gracious about being scooped himself by Valleywag.
More great talent breaks out from big media to make it big on their own.
: Speaking of great talent making it big, I told Om on the phone last night as he told me about his big move that I was most amused by Rafat Ali’s recollection of why he started PaidContent.org, now :
It was a hot and muggy summer in NYC, and not sure what I was thinking. Well, there was some thought to it: to raise my profile as journalist and get a job at WSJ or CNET News.com.
Ha. There are a hundred places that would die to hire Rafat right now. But he’s too smart to take their jobs.
: And, yes, I’m smugly proud of myself for that headline.
: LATER: On the blogging phenom as a follow-on to big media,Scott Karp says, and I agree:
All the brand value accrues to the individual. As Google continues to destroy the value of branded content, individual media brands may be the last line of defense. Individual talent as media destination may be the only viable alternative to search and social networking as portals to the web.
It’s really not a lot different from the way things were. For reporters, as Jay Rosen points out, the value of the brand accrues to the work of the individual, but for newspaper columnists and network anchors and writers whose bylines appear on the covers of magazines, some of their brand value accrues to the bigger media property. That was the way it had to be; people couldn’t be media properties. But now we can be.
