All posts by Peter M. Winter

Peter is a traditional media veteran and a digital media pioneer. He is an active angel investor and occasional consultant. He advises established companies on cultural regeneration and also consults to digital start-ups, helping them incorporate management process without sacrificing speed. He holds five technology patents. Peter is an award-winning public speaker and writer. His new book, "The Cannibal in the Room," will be published soon — it is the ultimate insider account of the battle to find a digital future for newspapers when the Internet came to town. He blogs on media and leadership here at blastofwinter.com and publishes his unconventional ideas about management on his LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-winter-92b69033/ His collection of short stories can be found at medium.com/peter-winters-life-of-fiction

Why is marketing so important?

– because without an audience, you’re talking to yourself

You Gotta Pick Your Shots

Why digital advertising has failed to deliver on its original promise

Not Much Has Changed Since I’ve Been Gone. Except for Just One Thing.

Giant digital news networks are rising – will any newspaper company be among them?

Schädenfreude

The elementary mistake that destroyed one of the largest newspaper companies in the country

The challenge of managing agents of change. Or, Justine should know

To create a successful new product, you may not need an Elon Musk, but you do need someone with a strong personality. How do you manage them? How do you insert them effectively into your company?

The Times and Facebook – it doesn’t really change a thing

The Times and Facebook are exploring a joint venture. But without refreshing the product for a new, younger audience, the Times will still find itself stuck in the same old newspaper demo – and that audience is leaving, one way or another

“The Only Newspaper In The World That Gives A Damn About Yerington” or, The End of Local Media

Differentiating your product is the ultimate marketing challenge in the digital world – and local doesn’t cut it

It’s tough being the boss

Digital First Media and McClatchy, the second and third-largest newspaper holding companies, are going south fast. What happened?

10 slides in 2 minutes

In just 10 slides and 2 minutes we show why newspapers capitulated to digital and what can be learned from it

Can anyone be trusted?

Why you watch the news you watch and visit the news sites you visit

Pimping

Too much of the news web is a remix – because good journalism costs money

A new year – and a new era in news

2015 – a new era in news begins. Just as cable television created a new product cycle in media, introducing brands like Discovery and CNN and HBO, so new digital brands like Vox and Buzzfeed and Reddit are rising on the Internet

Tener el martillo sin la una. To have the hammer without the nail.

There’s no Silicon Valley in Europe. Over the pond they take a different approach to technology development. It’s top-down versus […]

Nothing New Under the Sun

Digital news products face the same essential challenge of audience capture that traditional media faced

The Heart of the Newspaper Problem

There is a level of fixed cost to newspaper publishing below which the business cannot be sustained

The Sayonara Strategy: How Newspapers Will Fade Away

In 2018, more daily newspapers, by now out of cash and ideas, will be published only on Sundays, with news updates on online editions during the rest of the week

Cox, Tribune and a story of self-disruption

In the disruptive digital world, only cannibals survive It’s now fashionable to trot out the Harvard Business School thesis on […]

Digital First Media – the end of the beginning

This is a great time to be in the news business – if you’re not a newspaper. Andreessen Horowitz just […]

Owning Your Own Destruction

Business synergy is a myth – chasing it is fruitless An established company is always tempted to position a new […]

Go as far as you can see – then you’ll be able to see farther

The secret to new product development in the Digital Age: Start small, fail early, fail often I’m going to let […]

The Future of the News Business: A Monumental Twitter Stream All in One Place

The extinction of newspapers does not mean the end of journalism, just the end of journalism as we know it…

Success Can Be Fatal

Any business leader worried about the future must build a culture that welcomes it For newspapers, the Internet offered one […]

Taking on the Oracle of Omaha – or have I lost my mind?

Berkshire Hathaway owns railcars as well as newspapers. Is their decline faster than he thought it would be?

Keeping Your Head Straight

It’s never the technology that’s important. It’s the market and economic forces driving it that matter the most Newspaper companies […]

Hubris Is Blinding

A simple rule of basic management: Under-estimate your own market position and over-estimate the competition Newspaper companies don’t have an […]

But who will keep them honest if newspapers die?

If you lose contact with your market, you will be superseded by new competitors. Without distressed debt specialists looking for […]

It’s What I Do

In any business, operating performance is a function of organizational culture. QED. We’ve all got stories about crazed managers and […]