Mainstream media owners might hold Michael Tippett partly responsible for the collective ulcer they have developed as they struggle to stay relevant-and solvent-in the Internet age. But they can’t say he didn’t warn them.
“I remember speaking to newspaper groups 12 years ago, and them saying, ‘why would we bother to go online?’ ” says Tippett. “There was a lot of legacy thinking and people were reluctant to experiment and take chances.”
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The Essential Michael Tippett:
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Tippett has always been willing to take chances, and his legacy may very well be a radically altered world of journalism and media. In 2005, he joined Leonard Brody and Michael Meyers in founding NowPublic.com, a website that presents news gathered from the digital cameras, video recorders and eyewitness accounts of non-professional citizen journalists.
Tippett and his partners drew the inspiration for NowPublic from the rapid expansion of the blogosphere and the deep penetration of devices such as camera phones, developments that suddenly equipped everyday citizens with the tools to report breaking news at least as quickly as mainstream outlets.
“I thought, all the pieces are in place for this to happen, and there’s going to be a cultural moment when it does happen, and I want to be involved in building a platform that will make sense of that,” Tippett says.
Since its creation, Nowpublic.com has been named as one of Time magazine’s 50 coolest websites (2007) and earned an Emmy nomination for Advanced Technology (2009). In the coming year, Tippett expects to solidify the site’s revenue model by introducing on-site ads and negotiating deals with mainstream media organizations to share its user-generated content-arrangements that Tippett believes will show how his creation can complement, rather than destroy, traditional journalism.
After all, Tippett would much rather build than destroy. He’s been on the leading edge of web development and marketing since the early ’90s, when he founded WebPool Syndicate, one of Canada’s first internet companies, and he’s a steadfast believer in the necessity of new thinking.
“The thing with innovation is, you’re gonna get it wrong nine times out of 10, but you still have to try, because one of the 10 times you’re going to get it right.”
