• Fortune , Monday, June 12, 2006 10:45 AM

Call the Web the great equalizer--it doesn't matter anymore if you're ABC, The New York Times, or Google--anyone can produce content, anyone can advertise, and everyone on the Web is competing for traffic. No matter what, the quality and relevance of content is what reels in users--not a brand name, says David Kirkpatrick of Fortune. So what's a content provider to do? Is Rolling Stone still just a magazine publisher if a growing portion of its readership is consuming content via its Web site? Should it limit itself to editorial content, or move into video and user-generated content? All content publishers on the Web are grappling with these issues. When sports fans think about going to ESPN.com or SI.com, does it even occur to them--do they even care--that one was historically a TV network and the other a magazine? No--they want good content, that's it. Even radio companies like Clear Channel have to square with the fact that advertisers like Wal-Mart and MTV are producing their own audio content and distributing it on the Web. What happens if Coke decides to start its own broadband TV network? Would it advertise anymore? Kirkpatrick says he isn't forecasting the demise of old media as we know it, but the successful media companies of the future will be those that can "thoughtfully" tie their core products to "a richer online experience." However, doing that effectively requires a great deal more subtlety than simply copying what everyone else is doing.

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