David Smydra

In all these places, I heard editors and publishers enter the confessional to admit that distributed content tells us our sites are bad and ad blockers tell us our experiences are awful. Confession is good for the soul and strategic development.

…eard a surprising consensus that media’s reach strategy is a loser, or at least that we’ve lost it. Seeking audience and page views for their own sake does not build real value; it’s highly competitive; it rewards our worst instincts as editors and readers.

And so their core mission can’t and won’t be realized by what they say, but rather in how they empower, constrain, and manage what other people say. The trust we place in them is ultimately about whether we trust them to manage our own collective expression.