As I splashed through the rain last night, bouncing between the Greater Manchester Mayor's Media Party and the KPMG Christmas do, I tried not to think too much about where I was this time last month.
As it happens OTD I had a really fascinating chat to a top bloke called Charles Kobelke, the CEO from Business News, a first rate regional media business in Perth, Western Australia.
More broadly, I was very impressed with the generosity of people in Perth to meet and share ideas with an outsider like me, albeit one who has lived there before and has a tremendous affection for the place.
I was very sorry I couldn't make diaries work to meet with Paula Rogers from the Committee for Perth who had also responded enthusiastically to the idea of meeting up while I was there.
But Charles really gave me lots of food for thought on how I apply myself and work to expand TheBusinessDesk.com where I can.
Journalism takes a real beasting these days, and I feel enormously privileged to be working in the thick of it again. There is still so much to do, to play our part in debates, to push and cajole, and police the boundaries of a community. It was good of Andy Burnham to acknowledge the importance of a challenging media over drinks and pizzas last night.
As an industry, we're up against so many challenges of our own, not helped by publishers who have made so many appalling strategic missteps and wrecked their businesses as a result - while I also saw plenty of that in Australia - I was also pleased to connect again with the newspaper where I started my career, X-Press Magazine is online only now, but seems to be thriving too.
But in meeting Charles it was just good to hear an optimistic view of the future from a fellow media professional, and one who also backs the values of truth, accuracy and community and never stops innovating.
No comments:
Post a Comment