Media and Jobs

I should stop looking at other jobs while I have this one. Between September and December there will be plenty of time to scope out other things. However, I can’t deny that this caught my notice.

The owner of the Atlantic Monthly and a few other publications is
looking for a recent grad with an applied math or econ background to
help think through strategy and acquisitions for our media company.
The job will consist of modelling, mostly, and should be interesting,
as we're poised to expand.

I’ve done both applied math and econ, and rather enjoy making models. Not to mention I enjoy politics and the realm Atlantic Monthly deals in. So I was thinking maybe it’d be worthwhile to look into.

Except I realized, eh, what models I could construct probably say bad things for Atlantic Monthly. Magazines like that exist in a tenuous bridge between academics, mass media, electoral politics, and everyday discourse. While consumer demand for that bridge is rising, substitutes (cables news, internet media) are rising faster.

Which got me thinking how down I was on media in general. I’ve got Tivo to skip commercials and SharpReader RSS to skip ads for my webbrowsing, and you can’t be sure if I’ll pay a ticket to see a movie or download it from the net. Why should any content to be tailored to me in the future?