Two decades in media technology have shown me something uncomfortable: most traditional media companies aren’t just struggling with digital transformation—they’re actively accelerating their own demise through what I call the Seven Deadly Sins of Media.
Sin #1: Monopoly Complacency
Legacy media operated as protected monopolies for generations. Local newspapers owned their markets. Networks controlled prime time. This bred a dangerous assumption: audiences and revenue were guaranteed. I’ve watched newsrooms where the most innovative minds left for tech companies because “that’s not how we do things here” became the unofficial motto.
“That’s not how we do things here” became the unofficial motto.
Sin #2: Leadership Without Reinvention
Executive teams focus obsessively on preserving existing models rather than building for how audiences actually behave today. Product and technology teams get asked to optimize the current machine—faster page loads, better CMSs—instead of redesigning how the company serves audiences in a feed-first, creator-driven world.
Sin #3: Frozen Structures
Job definitions and labor agreements lock in workflows designed for print deadlines and broadcast schedules. I’ve seen newsrooms where a simple homepage redesign required six months of negotiations because it touched three different union contracts. Meanwhile, a single TikTok creator publishes more content in a week.
A single TikTok creator publishes more content in a week.
Sin #4: The Leadership Merry-Go-Round
A small set of executives rotate across similar institutions, bringing identical playbooks to different companies facing the same challenges. Fresh thinking gets filtered out before it reaches decision-makers.
Sin #5: Zombie Innovation
Media companies pour millions into technology that chases visible trends—app relaunches, format pivots, AI chatbots—without understanding how their actual audiences live on platforms like TikTok or consume information through LLMs. The innovation theater is impressive. The results are not.
The innovation theater is impressive. The results are not.
Sin #6: Format Blindness
Roadmaps obsess over incremental improvements to articles and homepages while audiences have moved to feeds, streams, and conversational interfaces. Teams imitate the surface aesthetics of modern products without adopting feed logic or creator-centric storytelling.
Sin #7: Commercial Surrender
Publishers handed over targeting, measurement, and pricing power to platforms, then wonder why programmatic systems treat premium journalism as interchangeable inventory. They kept the costs of content creation but surrendered most of the value it generates.
They kept the costs of content creation but surrendered most of the value it generates.
The companies that survive won’t just fix these sins—they’ll build entirely new operating models around how audiences actually want to discover, consume, and share information today.