NewCo's John Battelle: Media is in a ‘phase shift’

The promise of the Internet as a publishing medium was its openness. But that’s under threat now, as digital media enters a consolidation phase in which large platforms are staking out extremely powerful positions as content arbiters.
For publishing veteran John Battelle, now CEO of NewCo, the question is whether the open Web is able to navigate the new world of platforms.
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“I don’t think it’s been proven that you can build a publishing business on top of Facebook,” he said in this week’s Digiday Podcast. “You can point to BuzzFeed, but I’m struggling to name another. With Instant Articles and Google’s response, we’ll see if there’s a mobile business to be built on top of it. There should be, and there needs to be.”
The upside: Publishers are good at things platforms aren’t — and they’re highly adaptive.
http://digiday.com/publishers/john-battelle-digiday-podcast/