As I rebrand myself in the banking world when many my age opt to retire (not) I felt an honest appraisal of my thought patterns, motives and goals was in order.
Since I created Metro Pulse 45 years ago (yikes) it has been a educational joy ride as I played the psychic ringmaster to the intellectual circus. The changes I have witnessed over that time in media are unprecedented in our history and totally shape the tortured media landscape we inhabit today.
The advent of the Internet and Meta and Google (among others) taking over the traditional revenue streams in old guard media have spawned a flurry of alternative news disseminators as podcasts and social media influencers have risen the capture the attention of the masses. Add to that the brazen bias shown by many in the mainstream media politically (CNN. MSNBC among MANY others) and to say we live in a fragmented polarized media world is an understatement
Seeing as my father worked for the Chicago Tribune for 28 years, journalisic news and editorial DNA permeates thru out my system so as the mainstream media crumbles before our very eyes and their credibility and audience decimated by the day, as feisty independent media it begs for me to execute vision and insight going forward.
To say I was chagrined at the whore VC firms gutting newsrooms and cannabilizing legacy newspaper companies for their tangible assets (hear me Alden Capital?) does not even come close to my disgust with the direction of the media at this time. Even more alarming is the fact with crippled programmatic advertising revenue being siphoned off by Big Tech and subscriptions and paywalls seeing only VERY LIMITED success, the long term prospects for HYPERLOCAL media seem bleak and MSM muted at best.
Right now local media is vanishing at an alarming rate, a stalwart presence that fortified the community pillars of the all important 1st Amendment. But as an entrepreneur I immediately saw opportunity here in this retrenchment and at the same time I cast about to create a new business model that could better serve the masses in not only the PROPER dissemination of pertinent local information but in execution and branded presence WITHOUT the traditional revenue streams. And my past experience selling 80,000 tickets to a concert that NEVER happened for the cancelled Led Zeppelin concert at Chicago Stadium in 1980 (documented history of that on our sister site rock-expo.com) created a unique one of a kind learning curve that perfectly suited me to solve this local media conundrum.
As i assessed the banking “impacts” of my 30 year odyssey with the tickets (1987- 2017), it wasn’t until a financial professional in my world highlighted the skills required to achieve this once in a lifetime task from a banker’s eyes that I fully realized what I had accomplished and how it dovetailed with my blossoming bank marketing ventures as the solution to the dearth of local media thru my platforms to native sell banking services, foster non transactional branded community involvement and institutional goodwill.
For many years as a restless always moving entrepreneur I lamented the fact I DID NOT want to be known as a one trick pony . I feared the Led Zeppelin ticket project would etched on my gravestone as my one run for the roses this life. But as I methodically thought out the bank marketing plan which was spawned by an encounter with my local bank manager in 2016 where she was despondent over her antiquated direct marketing tools to promote her bank and I got the EUREKA moment and where I can truly say I saw the genesis of this project almost 10 years ago.
As I ruminated over the parameters of merging my flagship metropulse.com media ecosystem into a banking system and what it would entail, a daunting hurdle emerged and that was MINDSET. I am accustomed to forging my own path in life with the only guardrails being right or wrong or legal or illegal but when I deep dived banking I was introduced in a highly regulated and scrutinized industry, a most foreign environment for me. I can truly say it took years of mental adjustments, research and adaptations to be ready for this step.
And I wish to thank Jim Marous of the Financial Brand AND Ron Shevlin of the Snark Tank for the never ending fount of quality banking and financial information they have offered. Many times listening to their podcasts and reading their content over years and years has made me feverishly take notes so not to miss anything and created a big part of my foundational knowledge of this industry.
Seeing as I am NOT a banker by trade and hail from the media , event tickets and memorabilia sales this life, I am uniquely qualified to bridge BOTH industries with my company as the conduit. Media people are NOT bankers and bankers certainly are NOT media people but the irony is the secret to saving local media nationally is in a marriage of the 2 ensconced in a new business model I have created and can implement when properly prompted. Metropulse.com right now is a living breathing quality news aggregator with thousands of dedicated followers that has NEVER taken advertising and is TOTALLY self supported by me.
Welcome to the new world
Best MD