“In the physical world of books, for example, it was really simple. You can’t judge it in the same way that you judged the old one” argues Balbontin. “The challenge is that we tend to use past perspectives to judge a new market. Its publishing compatriot, The Guardian, draws millions of readers to its website each day struggles to bring in the fruit of its labour as it insists on keeping its content free. When The Independent stopped selling physical copies, many wondered how it would pay the bills. By dividing those teams, you create a subdivision of cultures which makes problems even more difficult to fix.”Īrguably, the biggest concern for media industries today relates to financial sustainability. It doesn’t matter which way you reach the customer. “The strategy for business should always be the same. There is no digital customer or print customer. They were epic fails because they didn’t know how to fail and they were failing big.”Ī typical misstep for media organisations was to create an individual digital arm separate from their print arm a mistake that’s still commonly made today. But then two years later they’d disappear completely. “When you went to these newspapers to see what was going on, they’d talk about investing millions in the website, charging for content, putting up a paywall and what not. “We were doing so well that failure was almost something that disappeared from our language and capabilities,” he says. Notably, media industries also struggled because they’d forgotten a key component of both life and business: the ability to fail. These models were very antiquated for this new world, which was a world of speed, agility, and thinking on your feet.” The only blueprint companies could follow was “the one that was known, the one that was invented in the industrial revolution which was a very hierarchical and structured business. He explains that media companies struggled from the first hurdle because there was no blueprint for tackling the digital age. “I often say that when you’re at your most successful in a business, you’re probably at your most vulnerable as well, and that’s what happened to everyone in the media industry” says Balbontin. Content depreciated in value, and companies like Expedia and Tripadvisor began cropping up and revolutionising the travel and e-commerce space. I still remember conversations around the internet saying it was just a fad.”įar from a fad, the internet altered the fabric of society. But inside companies, everyone was doing really well. “Of course, a few people called it out early. “Towards the end of the 1990s to the start of the 2000s, newspapers and magazines were arguably at their peak and there was no sign of significant change on the horizon,” he says. After a stint hitchhiking through South America, Balbontin landed his “dream job” at Lonely Planet in the early 2000s. Born in Patagonia in the South of Argentina, Balbontin moved to Bryon Bay, Australia at 17 years old on the back of a scholarship. Having made his name over at Lonely Planet, Balbontin helped usher in a model of book publishing for modern times and helped the world famous guidebook brand tackle the digital revolution. More than a decade on from the rise of the internet, modern media remains in a constant state of flux with media industries among the first to feel the disruption of digital technologies, says entrepreneur and Project16 speaker Gus Balbontin. At its late 80s peak, The Independent sold more than 400,000 copies a day. But when the The Independent became the UK’s first national daily to ditch its printing presses earlier this year, it was another reminder that physical media truly had become an expensive luxury. They come from my heart and I hope they touch yours.Ink and paper were once the bread and butter of the media world. All my paintings have deep, personal meaning. Much of my art is interwoven with intricate patterns and the delicate application of gold leaf to further conceptualize my themes. My paintings are explorations of my dreams, emotions and imagination. My inspiration is my personal experience with love, loss, and infinite joy. During my past three decades as an artist I have been an ardent supporter of a number of youth art programs in the Bay Area and spent time an instructor at the Lilian Paley Center for the Visual Arts in Oakland, California. Recently, one of my paintings was chosen for the cover of the college textbook, “Gendered Lives”, by Julia T. I have had numerous solo exhibitions over the years including an exclusive event in which I partnered with Mercedes-Benz of California. I'm based in the San Francisco Bay Area where my work is shown in galleries, corporate spaces, restaurants, and cafes.
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