Mark Potts

I'm Mark Potts, a recovering journalist who now is a strategic, product and business consultant to leading media and Internet companies.

Why do I call myself a recovering journalist? Because I spent 15 years as a print reporter and editor before switching to the digital and business worlds just as media began moving to the Web, in the early '90s. (I've been in the digital world so long that my AOL username is my real name!)

I think a lot of journalists—and traditional media executives—are caught up in old ways of thinking about the industry that are being wiped clean by the digital revolution. Without radical new approaches, the old journalistic institutions are suffering through horrible death spirals.

Rather than wallow in the past, I'd rather think about fresh new ways for the audience to receive, create and interact with news, information and advertising. That's what I've been doing for the past 15 years as a digital media executive and consultant.

I believe that we are at a significant turning point in media in which the audience and advertisers are massively switching from print to online, and that media companies must be coldblooded and aggressive about how they change their strategies, business models and products to take advantage of that switch. The sooner media companies embrace things like user-generated content, new kinds of storytelling, Web 2.0 tools, new forms of advertising and revenue generation, and wide-open interaction with their audience, the sooner they'll halt their slide into oblivion.

Otherwise, they're toast.

How do I know about this stuff? After 15 years as a journalist for The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and other major news organizations, I cofounded WashingtonPost.com, was on the founding team of the @Home Network and created and cofounded Backfence.com, the leading hyperlocal user-generated citizens media company.

I also ran the digital division of Cahners Business Information (now Reed Business Information), the leading U.S. trade magazine publisher, and have consulted for a wide variety of media and Internet companies and startups. Most recently, I spent six months consulting as temporary VP-editor of Philly.com, the Philadelphia Inquirer/Daily News Web site.

Disclosure: I do strategic and product consulting work for a variety of media and Web clients. If there are any potential conflicts with my clients, I will be transparent about them in my blog.