Steve Lindbeck: Media change an adventure for all
A summary of our January 2010 speaker, Steve Lindbeck
By Kay Vreeland
Steve Lindbeck, President and General Manager of Alaska Public Telecommunications, Inc. (APTI), spoke to Alaska Professional Communicators Thursday, January 7, 2010, about his experience as “An Alaskan in the Media Revolution,” explaining the challenges faced by Alaska public broadcasting in today’s rapidly changing media landscape.
Lindbeck is responsible for leadership and oversight of APTI, a media organization that includes KAKM-TV, KSKA-FM and the Alaska Public Radio Network, and which reaches audiences throughout Alaska. Having moved into public broadcasting in 2007 after a 30-year career in journalism and public affairs, he sees links between the decline of print journalism in Alaska and the vigorous role of public broadcasting in the new media revolution.
However, he noted, nobody knows where the fast-paced changes are leading us.
Lindbeck started his career in newsrooms in 1971 as a cub local sports reporter at West High School. Information was scarce in Alaska because of reporters’ distance from the main sources. By the early 1980s there were two vibrant and competitive newspapers, whereas today there is only the slimmed-down Anchorage Daily News. Although there was the rise of Channel 2 as the dominant local news channel, there was no public broadcasting and no Alaska public radio network.
The dramatic changes in information delivery we have seen since that time are nothing like the change we’re going to see, said Lindbeck. A new digital way of life in media may be glimpsed today in politics in the revolution of the Obama campaign going online, which Lindbeck compared to the Kennedy campaign’s utilization of television.
A recent conference at Google headquarters named swift response to consumer preferences as the key to survival in the digital age; consumers reveal these preferences as they read, view, click, and comment. This is only one aspect of today’s media life. The iPhone has an “app” (short for “application”) to record and play back programs from NPR. Cloud computing, blog conversations, Twitter news delivery, Kindle, Wikipedia, the upcoming computer Tablet, and the “disintermediation” of social media are all showing that information is not scarce, but infinite. Media owners have less power, and audiences are more fragmented. Advertisers are changing allegiance, and many computer users seem to be content competitors against the 80 percent of original reporting that is found in daily newspapers.
As print journalism declines, online tools make news and information delivery richer than ever through access to source documents, interaction with readers, expansion of good writing on blogs, and Internet journalism. Among the good trends emerging are larger audiences and more people engaging with media. In which direction will all this go? And, how will the Internet generate revenue: non-profit and philanthropic models, or public broadcasting models?
Where does public broadcasting fit in? It has a strong brand identity. People value it. It operates with trust, quality and authenticity. There is a genuine affection and market for it. And, as distribution channels compete, public broadcasting provides local and community news and connections, said Lindbeck. As the world fragments, people are hungry for community involvement. The real question, said Lindbeck, is how public broadcasting can ride this wave.
In Alaska, KUAC in Fairbanks, APTI in Anchorage and KTOO in Juneau are working to combine and unify operations with community involvement, under a working title of “Alaska Public Media.” Calling the new unified statewide public broadcasting organization project a “transformation,” Lindbeck said that its vision statement sees it as the leader in news, education and public affairs, as well as a community builder in Alaska. Although based in the news and programming values of NPR and PBS, its central mission will lie in the Alaska content that it produces.
In conclusion, asking where all this is going, how to use the new tools and how not to be left behind, Lindbeck framed the changing broadcasting climate as an evolution analogy: We are in the position of the dinosaurs after the big asteroid hit the earth, he said. We’re going to have to figure out how to become mammals, or birds, in order to survive. That’ll take a lot of imagination, experimentation and the courage to change, but it is a very exciting time, Lindbeck concluded. It’s an adventure for everyone involved.
