Kim Hollamby – “Success today doesn’t equal success tomorrow”

[Chris Goward]

Kim Hollamby is Head of IPC Media online which is responsible for magazines like NME and Countrylife. He is quite proud of the fact that he survived the boom-bust era and seems to have a solid grasp of the principles of online media.

In his talk he drew attention to the fact that media is constantly evolving and changing. It is only by trial and error that online journalism has begun to take shape.

ITV’s decision to buy Friends Reunited and then charge people to use it, was clearly a bad move. Soon after the purchase, the popularity of free sites began to increase and people were presented with much wider choice.

This just goes to show that success online should never be taken for granted. As Kim said: “You only have two seconds to convince someone to stay on your site.”

News sites have had to adapt their style to suit the online market. Media companies now seek to build brand loyalty across the areas of print, broadcast and online.

Kim believes the quality of digital media is the key to rising above the crowd. This is an important statement purely because people expect more.

One of the advantages bone fide journalists have over bloggers and citizen journalists for example, is the ability to produce accurate and reliable material.

I was glad Kim criticised the view that anyone can be a journalist nowadays. The passive audience is a lot larger than the proactive.

Online media will continue to evolve and internet fads will come and go, but people will always want news from a trustworthy source.