Thanks to Adam for pointing to this post by Rory Brown. As Rory points out, reporting time for listed media companies gives a good insight into how they see the world and how they are looking to grow and adapt. And there will be more reports next week, and they may not be pretty.
Here is a key point about my parent comapny Reed Elsevier
The vast majority of Reed Elsevier’s revenues and profits do not come from a ‘buyer meets seller’ introduction service that a lot of publishers cling to. Instead they are providing valuable data and workflow solutions that help their customers do their jobs better, more efficiently, with more transparency and faster.
This point really resonates for me as I am reading Jeff Jarvis's What Would Google Do? In particular, the following lines.
You should be asking: am I a knowledge company? a data company? A community company? A Platform? A network? Where is your value and where is your revenue? Remember that they might not be in the same place; the money may come in through a side door. It's time for your identity crisis.