What the Red Sox could teach media companies
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - Let me get this out in the open right away: I am a lifelong, unabashed New York Yankees fan.
I have spent many wicked, joyous hours on social media, needling fans of the enemy Boston Red Sox when the team faltered. I had a ball when Boston collapsed at the end of the 2011 season and then suffered through a train wreck of a season in 2012. (Last year, when the 'Saux' dramatically captured the World Series, I mysteriously became rather mute. Go figure).
Still, as a longtime business-news writer and columnist, I have a grudging respect for the way that the Red Sox management handles its affairs. It always looks to the future. It isn't tied to the past. When storied players like Pedro Martinez and Jacoby Ellsbury, immensely popular stars who had helped the team win a World Series title, threaten to become a burden on the Sox' payroll, they invariably become ex-Red Sox players.
The Sox brain trust exhibits an ability to adapt and take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace, as the team aims to stockpile promising young (and inexpensive) players to complement the veteran core.
Can we say that the U.S. media industry has a similar penchant for taking advantage of opportunities, though?
Remember, in the early 21st century, the Internet took shape as a cultural and business force. Offering convenience to consumers of all kinds and an efficient new way to live, clearly the digital technology was going to be a life-altering societal force. But media companies more often than not scorned the transformation.
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Incredible as it seems now in our digital age, the media industry even appeared to look for ways to ignore it while blissfully carrying on a deadly 'business-as-usual' policy.
The Red Sox, however, never fell guilty to the standard-operating-procedure management credo. I was never more impressed than I was in the past few days when the Sox traded away four starting pitchers in the hope of building up the team for next season.
This lack of sentiment is one lesson that the U.S. media industry could learn from the Red Sox. And since Red Sox owner John Henry also controls the Boston Globe, we may just see a corollary effect on the Globe.
Just nine months after winning the 2013 World Series, the last-place Red Sox dealt established starting pitchers Jon Lester, John Lackey and Jake Peavy as well as Felix Doubront. These assets had become too expensive for the franchise to hang on to. The Red Sox dispassionately began planning for the 2015 season and beyond.
It must be strange for Red Sox Nation, as the team's rabid followers are known, to see their team finish last in 2012, win the whole shebang in 2013 and then fall again into the cellar of the American League East.
But the Sox innately trust that the fans will stay loyal, even through the odd lean year. By contrast, my Yankees seem to panic whenever the team dips. The Yankees typically dangle gargantuan contracts at seasoned players, hoping against hope that they won't show their age by slumping or getting injured. The Yankees' solution is to throw money at every problem.
Media companies don't have the resources to solve their problems by simply writing a check. But they inevitably shun solving their woes with creative thinking. They doggedly follow a dangerous herd mentality instead of looking to invent or discover new ways of doing things.
The media industry should embrace the emergence of entrepreneurs like Amazon's Jeff Bezos, who now controls the Washington Post, and John Henry of the Red Sox and the Boston Globe.
As the Red Sox have shown, bold thinking is often filled with more promise than peril. Take note, U.S. media companies.
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