Traditional media is dead. Long live traditional media. Jeremy Probert explains why journalism lives on

Amongst the many, many things – gentle reader – that make me positively incandescent with rage, is the presumption that traditional media (that’s TV and radio, newspapers and magazines, he added helpfully) will be outmanoeuvred by social and, bereft of purpose, will limp off to a cave and die. Citizen journalism will flourish and we’ll all live in a brave new world (personally, I’m a little nervous about the creatures in’t) where our news will be delivered by Twat. Rather than by paperboy. (Do paperboys have a union? I’d be mobilising, if I were them.)

Anyway, long story short, it’s horsedroppings. Working – as many of us do – in the lush and sunlit field of communication (please do not adjust your set), I find an appetite for TV coverage like never before. Not only do people want to be on TV, but TV content providers (four- minute news programme with an intro delivered by Natasha Kaplinsky, anyone? £15k) are everywhere. And print media? Well, I’m sat here with a copy of The Telegraph (not my choice, there’s something important in it, honest) and it doesn’t look terribly hamstrung, or in fear of its life.

Some might point to the reduction in staffers manning most news outlets (and the pressures they’re under to deliver content, and thus the lessening in editorial scrutiny and the lowering of the quality bar for said content) as symptomatic of the unstoppable rise of social as people’s news source of choice. But again, t’ain’t necessarily so – we live in austere times, where cost is the bogeyman and efficiency is king. If you’ve not been whacked with the cudgel of continuous improvement yet, then my advice would be to watch your back, ‘cos it’s coming.

Just last week I read – and you’ll have to take my word for it, as I forgot to note the source – that in reality, there’s far more reliance on traditional media than on any other form of news or information share – up to and including Facebook and your mate Brian down the pub. It turns out that the real role of Twat and Book is to add local colour to a story. In some cases, this is good – Arab Spring being one notable example – in some cases, ‘local colour’ is the meanderings of eyewitness Mrs Miggins the Halfwit, and simply serves to deepen geographic and cultural rifts.

So, once again, I seem to be questioning the value of social media which, serendipitously enough, was why I called you all here today.

What is the value of social media? (I’ll take the pricking of my thumbs as confirmation of the lynch mob that’s – as I write – being rounded up in Shoreditch and Hoxton. In my mind’s ear, I can hear the rumble of the tortured shriek of iPhones being sharpened.) And no, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, how much is a social medium?

Because if you’re Mr Karp (may I call him Koi?) then it’s in the region of $1bn (mwahahaha) and if you’re Michael and Xochi Birch, it’s $850m. (in fairness to Mr and Mrs Birch – get a haircut Michael, you look a bit creepy – they sold some years ago, which sounds a long time but was actually five years ago, and $850m then would be a quite a lot more now. Maybe.)

However. If you’re AOL, a social medium is worth $10m. If you’re a private equity outfit – let’s call you Criterion Capital Partners (I bet they call themselves something exciting and edgy like CriCap, but I bet some of their investors simply call them Crap – yes, very, very poor, I know), then a social medium is worth $1m.

You’ve got to suspect that deep in the offices of Big Purple, there’s an increasing amount of frantic activity as their brightest and best try to work out how much a social medium is worth to them.