Author: Ally Simpson

This morning I read an interesting essay here called Death to the Mass – Media must rebuild its business around relevance and value, not volume.  The title caught my eye because a central aim of Ballymena Today is relevance and value in our content. We are not as concerned about the volume of content we create and share. We are more concerned about the conversation that happens as a result of what we say, what we do and how we say and do. That has always been a priority. Focus on conversation even though the conversation of others cannot be held in our hands or controlled by us. I want to pull out two very important quotes from the linked article – …imagine instead if news were a service whose aim is to help people improve their lives and communities by connecting them not only to information, but also to each other, with a commercial model built on value over volume. Imagine if news understood its role not as a vertically integrated industry that owns and controls a scarcity — the printing press, the broadcast tower, delivery trucks, the audience, space or time in media, and lately attention — but rather as a member of the community it serves and as a player in a larger, complex ecosystem of information, data, technology, and relationships Our Ballymena Today team does not merely want you to come...