• by Michael Sippey , April 14, 2011

Hi, my name's Michael, and I'm a recovering media monopolist.

I went to college in a small town in upstate New York. While there, I managed distribution of The New York Times; it was a franchise that was passed down from friend to friend over the years. I was the local pay wall. At the beginning of each semester, I'd set out a table in the student union, sign up every New Yorker who couldn't live without their "Arts & Leisure" section and Sunday NYT Magazine to a semester-long subscription. Then every day, including Saturdays and Sundays, I (or one the cash-starved freshmen I'd outsource the job to) would get up at 7 a.m., and deliver the papers to dorm rooms and faculty offices.

The demand for the big-city paper in rural Hamilton, N.Y. was arguably an anomaly - thanks to the combination of analysis-starved professors, and students flush with disposable income. Back then (the faraway '80s), our collective media diet wasn't terribly diverse. We were dining on the big three networks and the early days of cable, enjoying between-meal snacks of magazines, and guzzling down draughts of local newspapers and radio.

Fast-forward 20+ years, and we're grazing on a radically different diet.

For one, distribution channels have changed. Television's no longer the "idiot box," thanks to Netflix, iTunes and Hulu. Local media's changed radically, thanks to what used to be a simple email list started by a guy named Craig. And my former micro-monopoly is now a relic, thanks to the Web and mobile technology.

But more importantly, what media we consume has changed as much as how we consume it. The Web not only made it easier for us to get (and now pay for) The New York Times, it also shepherded in an explosion of what we call "passion media," the media created by and for people with passion.

If you're passionate about something -- cooking, sports, fashion, online gaming, movies, knitting, kayaking, indie music, television game shows, scrapbooking, opera, contemporary art, street art, you name it -- there is media out there for you. It's coming in all sorts of digital forms -- blogs, communities, apps, games. And it's easy to find -- through Google, of course, but also through app stores and recommendations from your friends on Facebook.

What we're talking about isn't "service journalism" or "robo-content," this is the real deal: Content created by people who are deeply engaged in their category, and care deeply about their audience. Passion media is created by people like Heidi Swanson, who writes about cooking at 101cookbooks.com. Her site is home for an audience of passionate foodies (myself included) who love the recipes she shares - and the stories that go with them. Passion media is Destructoid.com, where Yanier Niero Gonzalez and his team of editors cover console gaming like no one else - and reach an audience of 1.6 million die hard gamers every month.

And, of course, passion media is being created by Jane Pratt, who arguably pioneered passion media with her seminal magazine titles Sassy and Jane, and who is gearing up to launch a new online venture this spring.

The media monopolies of 20 years ago (no matter how small) have been replaced by people and their passions. Passion media is where engaged consumers are spending their time; it's where opinions are being shaped.

This is why smart brands and marketers need to understand what it is, where it is, and how to use it. This isn't just about being a smarter buyer of fragmented media; this is about partnering with today's leading voices, and being part of the conversations that are happening at the center of culture.